🚀 go-pugleaf

adam@soda.berkeley.edu (Adam J Richter) writes:
>	Could you please cite your sources for these two amazing
>claims?

>In article <1991Nov6.203917.25971@m.cs.uiuc.edu> coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>>2) they [Apple] paid Xerox lots of bucks for the rights to borrow
>>it [the Xerox GUI]

Numerous magazine and newspaper articles, both at the time of the
introduction of the Macintosh and at the time of the lawsuit (no, I
don't keep a clipping service, but there were a lot of them out there).
Basically, Apple agreed to pay Xerox a small percentage of profits on
each Mac sold over the first few years of its existance in return for
access to Xerox's research.

>>[...] it's clear that the pace of
>>innovation picked up massively around the time that user interface
>>copyrights were become more of a viable notion).

If you don't see this as obvious, we're watching two different
industries. Note that my quoted statement does _not_ say that
innovation picked up _because_ of user interface copyrights, it merely
says that they were correlated. Anyone who has watched the computer
industry for more than ten years and doesn't think that user interface
innovation picked up a lot of speed around 1982 or so (about the time
of the Franklin case, the K.C. Munchkin case, and some others) has,
IMHO, either a very strange view of innovation or wasn't paying much
attention.

--John

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
John L. Coolidge     Internet:coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP:uiucdcs!coolidge
Of course I don't speak for the U of I (or anyone else except myself)
Copyright 1991 John L. Coolidge. Copying allowed if (and only if) attributed.
You may redistribute this article if and only if your recipients may as well.