🚀 go-pugleaf

karsh@trifolium.esd.sgi.com (Bruce Karsh) writes:
> The ease with which software can be copied has cost the software industry
> a lot of investment capital.  But if it becomes legal to sell plagiarized
> compies of software, who'd invest in new software development?  It takes
> years of development and millions of dollars to bring a modern software
> product to market.  Who'll pay for this?
> 
> Without protection against plagiarism, there'll be no significant investment
> in software development.


Just like people no longer produce books, magazine and newspaper
articles, records, tapes and CDs, right?

Not being able to copyright the "look and feel" of a program is not
protecting anyone's intellectual property rights.  It's an attempt by
commercial vendors to protect their "hooks" that they use to sell
their product.  If I produce a spreadsheet that looks and runs like
Lotus 1-2-3, then Lotus now has to work harder to get people to buy
their software instead of mine (which sells for less than $100,
hypothetically, of course).  It isn't plaguarism...it's using a
standard user interface - one that Lotus happens to have hit on first.


God forbid that companies would have to sell their software SOLELY on
the virtues of speed, reliability, and efficiency.  By copyrighting
user interfaces, you automatically make MY program more difficult to
use since my users have to learn a new interface.  Gee, I can see how
that falls under protection of intellectual property rights...

-jon