On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 11:06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > no mechanism to get paid for his brilliant Intellectual Property which he > neglected to protect, because he released his product as Open Source. The
Nonsense. 1.) "Intellectual property" is a dehumanizing construct which I put into the same word basket as "collateral damage". There is no evolution of knowledge if knowledge is not shared - and "intellectual property" is the anathema of sharing knowledge. Can you imagine where we would be today if Isaac Newton would not have openly published his ideas, but locked them away as "intellectual property"? 2.) It was not this guys "brilliant intellectual property" anyway, since he built on top of existing free software solutions, modifying and improving them. While his own work has great merits, it's only a small fraction of the total work - which he was allowed to use freely only under the condition that he would share his work as well. It is a non-monetary economy of that kind which obviously suits "increase of knowledge wealth" best, while it might not always suit "increase of personal pecuniary wealth". Horst
