🚀 go-pugleaf

On 17 Oct 89 00:58:49 GMT,nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) said:
Russ> You can argue that this is a powerful disincentive to creation.  Why should
Russ> someone create software if someone else can come along and copy it?  Going
Russ> back to the VCR example, the first company to produce it pays all the
Russ> costs of the development.  The second company pays only the cost of
Russ> adapting the first company's VCR software to their own hardware.

Russ> But of course, the same thing goes on all the time.  For the most part,
Russ> the second manufacturer of a product can steal most of the ideas from the
                                               ^^^^^
Russ> first product.  Why should software be different?

I understand that you didn't literally mean 'steal', but there is a
point in there. Ideas are abstract, and 'stealing' of them is hard to
define, if necessary at all. Software, on the other hand, is an
implementation of ideas. It is something physical (you ever seen
someone execute abstractions on a computer? ;-). Software is of course
different from many other implementations of ideas in that it can be
copied at a very low cost (or seemingly at no cost at all), but it is
still good to remember the differences.
--
Pertti Kellom\"aki (TeX format)  #       These opinions are mine, 
  Tampere Univ. of TeXnology     #              ALL MINE !
      Software Systems Lab       #  (but go ahead and use them, if you like)