🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <448@oneb.UUCP> kmcvay@oneb.UUCP (Ken McVay) writes:

>>GeoWorks?  It has a "Mac look-and-feel".  Unless they licensed the rights 
>>from Apple, I think that Apple doesn't care because people aren't buying 
>>GeoWorks instead of their overprice Macs.
>
>Speaking simply as a "user", this whole issue seems childish, although
>I can readily understand the financial side of it. How far will we go 
>with "look and feel" crap before we wake up?
>
>My RCA TV has the l&f of all other tv's
>My Chrysler has the l&f of a Model T Ford
>My Eltech 9870 has the l&f of an IBM PC, which has the l&f of my 
>venerable Osborne-1, which........margarine has the l&f of butter,
>which has the l&f of pork fat.
>

These are all physical objects -- hard capital.  A piece of software
is *intellectual* property.  It costs you very little to steal
intellectual property, as opposed to physical property.

>So what? How many different formats can you produce for a spreadsheet
>and still HAVE a spreadsheet?

Different formats; different programs.  You won't get sued if you have
a different format.  However, steal someone's user interface, then you
might...

Theft is theft.  There are intellectual property rights, and that is
what this is all about.

>Let'em stand or fall in the marketplace by the quality (or, in the case
>of Loutus, lack of same) of the application's performance...


So, what you're advocating is this: let no one reap the benefits of
R&D.  Just sit back until someone else comes out with a great idea,
then clone it and reap the benefits.  Well, that's great... but who's
going to eat the R&D in the first place, if they don't get the reap
the benefits?

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey A. Sullivan		| Senior Systems Programmer
jas@venera.isi.edu		| Information Sciences Institute
jas@isi.edu                    	| University of Southern California