🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.980928140832.24247A-100000@howard>
           patrick@howard.genetics.utah.edu "Patrick" writes:
> No one has managed to explain, from what I have seen, why this goofy 
> theory that ideas are hive property doesn't apply to everything, not just 
> software.  A new tool conceived, designed, and produced by me should be 
> free? 

You've fundamentally misunderstood the argument. A physical tool is
physical property. The *design* of the tool is an *idea* -- it is
not a physical object. In some countrirs, people are allowed to
own ideas: these owned ideas are called "intellectual property".

> It is merely the steel expression of my idea.  Just like a socket 
> wrench started out as an idea, the expression of that idea is the steel 
> socket wrench.  Why should it not be free?  It took work to make it.  It 
> took dilligence and time to express that idea in a concrete form.  This 
> is NO different than software.  

No, it is *very* different from software. Software can be reproduced
at essentailly zero cost. Socket wrenches can't.
 
> If I write a book, it is copywrited and is my intellectual property.  The 
> book is analagous to software...it is not a concrete thing, just the 
> media that holds the idea (the story) is concrete.  Should you be able to 
> acquire this book for free?

If the owned of the book gives it to you, yes.

> How about using the idea of my story 
> (software) in a story of your own?  That is plaigerism and theft, yet 
> what are you stealing?

What jurisdiction are you talking about? It most certainly isn't 
theft in English law.

> So, a socket wrench, a story in a book, software...all expressions of an 
> idea that an INDIVIDUAL had.

Yes, building on the ideas of *lots* of other people.

> Not a hive, not a collective mind, and individual.

No. Take the program I am using to write this article on. It builds on
many ideas, including: writing, computers, electronic stored program
computers, the von Neumann architecture, cathode ray tubes, assembly
language, high-level languages, the Internet, email, Usenet.

These ideas were developed by thousands of people. No one person could
invent them all: they are the result of a collective intelligence.

> It only derived 
> from their personal mind which is NOT the property of anyone but themselves.
> 
> patrick
> 
> 

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