🚀 go-pugleaf

| From: Garrett.Wollman@f107.n325.z1.fidonet.org
| Does anyone here get the impression that Bruce Karsh is completely missing
| the point?

| He complains that people are trying to take his "rights" away from him,
| using typical right-wing-style bombast, while everyone else has been trying
| to tell him that those "rights" never existed in the first place....
---
Oh, now you're way off base.  In fact, the courts seem to be saying
exactly that we DO have those rights; the people arguing against Karsh
are generally saying that we SHOULDN'T have those rights, not that we
DON'T, 'cause the courts are, ultimately, the only bodies that can say
whether we do or don't.

As to who's right wing and who isn't, I don't think you have a
reasonable hook for either characterization here.  There are many people
who would be considered left wing by any reasonable standard who
strongly advocate the right of creative people to control the things
they create.  The artists, for instance, who have fought for their right
to control the display and alteration of their works of art, even
against the wishes of the owners of the physical piece, would hardly be
your canonical John Birch Society candidate.

Now I, personally, believe that there's nothing especially innovative
about the 1-2-3 interface and that it would be "better" for society if
those who wanted to innovate in other, interesting areas of information
management could use it as their core interface and then do interesting
things around it, since otherwise their innovate work can only be
evaluated by those who first learn their (pointlessly) innovative core
interface.  This makes it very hard to do fair evaluations (you're
changing two factors at once, rather than one).  BUT, I would also have
to say that Lotus should, indeed, have the right to copyright their
exact sequence of commands in menus, if they choose to do so.  In a
rational world it would just mean that people would migrate to another
tool, that didn't protect its interface and allowed people to build on
top of it, because that platform offered the best long-term potential
for superior evolution.

If I read a novel and think, when I'm done, "Hey, this book would have
been a real winner if only the last chapter had ended a little
differently:..." I am not allowed to innovate by reprinting the book
with a different last chapter, though I could write an entire new book
with a similar plot as a base for my improved ending or could publish
just the new last chapter and say "Read the original book and then read
this last chapter instead of the one it was published with."

Let's get a little real here -- most of the 1-2-3 clones weren't written
because the creators had some innovation to try and wanted a standard
base for users to stand on as they tried out the innovation; they were
written because the creators saw a market and figured they could grab a
piece of it by selling at a lower price.  I don't think they especially
deserve haloes for that or to be cannonized as martyrs if the courts
slap their fingers.

--
scott preece
motorola/mcd urbana design center	1101 e. university, urbana, il   61801
uucp:	uunet!uiucuxc!udc!preece,	 arpa:	preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com