On Monday, October 14, 2002, at 06:42 PM, Miller, Kevin wrote: > Let me see if I follow your second argument here. I create a work. > Someone > else copies the work. Because that someone else copied my work, I > should > give up control of it to a third person? The entire system of > intellectual > copywrite that exists at the moment would cause this to fail and > rightfully > so. If the creator of a work can lose ownership because someone else > makes > use of it, then why bother creating it in the first place. > Just wait for > someone else to create something and steal it from them. > I have nothing against Blue Dragon, CF_Anywhere and every other CF > parser > that exists. I think it's a great thing that they feel CF is a strong > enough > language that they would even want to write a parser for it. But I do > have > to recognize that the language is owned by MM and they have every > right to > say what's part or not part of it. The fact that MM says what's in the > language but is willing to listen to our suggestions gives as much of a > level playing field as having the language controlled by someone else.
If I understand correctly, the language, CFM, can not (or can no longer) be copyrighted -- only implementations of the language. (I don't necessarily agree with this, but apparently that's the way is is). What I am concerned with is that the language gets bastardized by many people doing different dialects. Rather than have the chaos of Babel, at some point, if there are lots of implementers of CFML, control of the (non-copyrighted) CFML language should be placed in the hands on an independent entity. Say, M$ decides to implement CFML but includes a lot of must-have functions -- it has (de facto) subordinated the language to its own implementation. Look at JavaScript/JScript --->ECMAScript for precedent (or browsers, or OSes, yadda, yadda, yadda) I guess you could say that the only way for MM to prevent someone (bigger) from stealing the language -- is to give it away -- to the public domain. Vince rang a bell, that can't be unrung! Dick ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists&body=lists/cf_talk FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Get the mailserver that powers this list at http://www.coolfusion.com
