[1236] in Depressing_Thoughts
Re: Lotus, continued....
hga@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (hga@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Tue Jul 3 10:33:50 1990
If RMS is our only hope, we're dead.... In truth, the battle is just
beginning, with the ink barely dry on the first favorable decision for
Lotus. This has a long way to go, but it is time to start getting
energetic before things get to the point where it's difficult to
impossible to legally write software without stepping on someone's
illegitmately granted intellectual protection.
Just think of what might be the most recent example of a new form of
property: real estate. When we moved from hunter-gatherer to farmer
styles of society, the idea of owning a piece of land was no doubt
pretty strange and divisive. But after many, many years we (in the
West, at least) worked out some reasonable ways of dealing with it,
even if there are still those who say property is theft, and/or the
government should own all of it. With time (and it might take a
generation or more while people get a feeling in their bones for
intellectual property) it should all work out, but we'll have to put
some effort into it to do it right and do it as soon as is reasonable.
