[Leaplist] FYI, evidence of realities of IP

[Justin M. Keyes]

On 1/17/07, Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday 17 January 2007 11:59, Damien McKenna wrote:
> > A little known fact: the wonderful and ubiquitous bzip2 compression utility
> > is a rewrite of an older utility called bzip.  The original bzip used an
> > algorithm that was patented by a 3rd party so the offending code was
> > replaced, thus bzip2.
> > http://www.freshports.org/archivers/bzip/
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bzip2
> >
> > This is just a tiny, day-to-day example of the fact that IP effects
> > everything we do with a computer, especially the software that we write as
> > developers.  Despite the intentions of the GPL, the noble goal of living in
> > a world free of anti-competitive restraints, and the years of people's
> > lives donated to a good cause, we live in a world restricted by laws that
> > control what we may and may not do, including the fact that you cannot
> > infringe upon someone else's intellectual property (IP) without
> > repercussions.
> >
> > Just food for thought.
>
> On the other side, if I spend 4 months writing a book, shouldn't I be granted
> a monopoly to sell it for at least a few years?

Nope.

Copying isn't stealing. If I copy your gold, I haven't taken anything from you.

I'm sure your ideas are brilliant, but they're ideas.

Justin Keyes