🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Nov1.151812.28814@freedom.msfc.nasa.gov> robichau@freedom.msfc.nasa.gov (Paul Robichaux) writes:
      My view of Apple's action is that they are attempting to preserve something
      which cost them a great deal of money to develop. They literally bet the
      company on the Macintosh interface, some of which was derivative and some
      original. THE IMPLEMENTATION WAS ALL ORIGINAL, folks. The meat of Apple's
      suit against Microsoft was that MS had duplicated elements of the Mac
      interface which Apple felt were unique- not anything so general as "over-
      lapping windows" or "pull-down menus."

      I am a happy Mac user and will continue to be one. I am sorry that the
      LPF has chosen to boycott Apple's products, although I certainly support
      their right to do so. While I appreciate and understand the ideals behind
      the LPF position, I firmly believe that those who take the financial and
      other risks associated with a new technology- a personal-computer based GUI
      in this case- deserve to control THEIR IMPLEMENTATION of that technology
      as part of the reward of their efforts.

I've heard variants of this argument several times, and I must admit
that it doesn't make any sense to me. I don't think that anyone is
maintaining that Apple did anything wrong when creating the Mac,
partly from ideas developed by Xerox and others, and partly by it's
own innovations. I don't think that this discussion is about the
ownership of either source or binary code, but the ownership of
display algorithms and interfaces -- the ideas, not the code.

What I'd like an Apple supporter to explain to me is why is it ok for
Apple to borrow ideas developed by other companies in the creation of
the Mac, but then to restrict others from incorperating the ideas that
Apple created into new products? Is your answer that noone has the
right to borrow ideas from anyone else and that Apple simply got away
with taking some ideas from Xerox because Xerox didn't sue fast
enough? Or do you maintain that none of the ideas behind the Mac
interface came from anywhere but inside Apple (this would seem to
contradict statements made by Mac developers)? I think that to logically
maintain support for Apple's position you must answer "yes" to one of
these questions.

	Hayden