[azipa] Torvalds responds to Microsoft

[Trent Shipley]

1) It's probably time to migrate this thread to PLUG.  The AZIPA green-heads
are probably tired of deleting it.

2)  "Cavemen", er, our pre-modern ancestors, did think of intellectual
property rights.  They just couldn't protect them.  Shamen kept ritual
secrets.  Tribes and units within tribes including clans and voluntary
sodalities also kept secrets.

However, for all but the last three or four centuries intellectual property
was synonymous with secrecy or physical monopoly.

-- Nestorian monks had to smuggle silkworms out of China to Persia.  This
broke the Chinese silk monopoly.

-- They say that Shakespeare doled out parts to his actors line by line.
Actors never got to read the whole play.  That way his competitors had
trouble stealing it.

Of course, secrecy is still the ultimate protection for intellectual
property.  In many ways copyright is unsatisfactorily weak.  Hence the
desire for software patents.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: der.hans [mailto:AZIPA@LuftHans.com]
> Sent: Monday, May 07, 2001 10:20 PM
> To: Keith L. Jenkins
> Cc: 'Wes Hopper'; Azipa (E-mail)
> Subject: RE: [azipa] Torvalds responds to Microsoft
>

> > is no distribution and no requirement to reveal the innovation.  We have
> > now arrived at "hidden source."  Without a cash stream from licensing,
> > how is the legal defense/enforcement of a GPL funded?  (Anyone?)  If you
> > violate the GPL, the owner of the copyright has to sue for infringement
> > of the copyright in the "open source" material.  If violations became
> > widespread, how would enforcement be funded?  Things that endure have
>
> That is one of the issues in the Free Software world. We didn't say it was
> perfect, only that it's better :).
>
> > workable financial as well as physical structures.  BTW, Professor Bohr
>
> Time will tell which model endures longer as a stable financial
> model. Thus
> far the Open Source model has lasted the longest. That's what science has
> been based on. I wonder if cavemen thought of IP rights or just
> shared with
> their fellow knuckle draggers... :)
>
> ciao,
>
> der.hans