RMS wondered what would happen to people brought up in a predominantly closed world. He worried about the effects of billions of dollars spent telling people that ideas are property, it's wrong to share, morals should follow laws and that you owe more to corporate profits than you do to your neighbor. The cumulative effects are beyond my understanding, but I have noticed a set of symptoms and have decided to give it a name: intellectually retentive.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&c2coff=1&q=%22intellectually+retentive%22&btnG=Search A quick google search turned up nothing, so I don't think anyone has bothered to publish the idea before. It's mine bitches. ... Just kidding. The concept richly follow Frued's concept of anally retentive people. Wikipedia has: "Sigmund Freud proposed that in a child's early years there is a pre-occupation with the mouth. This is known as the "oral stage". Then the child typically moves on to the "anal stage" which is characterised by the child deriving pleasure from bowel movements. The child discovers the pleasure which comes from the exercise of power (in this instance the power to hold on or let go)." The person who suffers from intellectual retentiveness has a terrible neurosis. They believe that other people are out to "steal" their ideas. At the same time, they are constantly trying to acquire control over others people's ideas and work. When they come into contact with new ideas, they quickly internalize them and seek to own them. Regardless of how slight a contribution they make, they think they own it all. It is this kind of person who drafts 10 page non disclosure agreements and non compete contracts. Their preoccupation with control makes them petty, distrustful. Inevitably, they get worse not better. They feel robbed whenever someone profits from an idea they had anything to do with. All of us have these tendencies, but most of us get over it. People who have the best ideas and contribute the most will say things about how they could not have gotten anywere without prior art, "standing on the shoulders of giants" and so on. Mature people will feel lucky to have an original idea that other people appreciate at all. Publishing, telco and many software companies seem to be run by people like this. They understand that an individual's contribution is dwarfed by society's and seek to turn that relation into something they can control. Stallman has written about these tendencies this and his ideas have been taken up by many others, especially Laurence Lessing who has studied copyright laws from the RMS perspective.
