Re: Enjoy solving problems?

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Re: Enjoy solving problems?

In a message dated 98-06-23 19:52:02 EDT, you write:

<< On Tue, 23 Jun 1998 08:17:08 +0100, Stuart Dawson
 <sd@dawson-eng.demon.co.uk> wrote:

 >In article <358e3396.871714@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, Andrew Lewis
 ><floodle@usa.net> writes
 >>Unless you come up  with something incredibly
 >>unique, no one  in their right mind would pay for it,
 >
 >That's all _you_ know.
 >
 >>I am opposed to the entire concept of intellectual property.
 >
 >Ah, a principled socialist. Or a loser with just enough brainpower to
 >come up with a self-justifying rationalisation for stealing the product
 >of other peoples' work and investment.
 >
 >I make a coffee-table. It's mine. You steal it. You're a thief.
 >I write a program. It's mine. You steal it. You're a thief.
 >
 >What part of that do you have trouble with?
 >
 >--
         A coffee table is a tangible product.  It requires a certain
 amount of labor to produce, and a certain amount of labor is required
 on the part of the producer to create  it (tangible, physical labor).

         A TI-Basic program can be produced for free, as the
 programming language was already created and freely distributed by
 others, and any given programming technique was probably also thought
 of by someone else.  It requires no investment, aside from owning a
 calculator  (but a calculator is also a physical thing).
         So lets say you write a math program in TI-Basic.  First of
 all, it costs you nothing, since you  already own the calculator, and
 the computer, and the link cable.  Secondly, you probably just took
 whatever formulas it  solves directly from a math text.  What have you
 done, except taken some public domain formulas and code them into a
 public domain language?  If we follow your archaic property-based
 logic, TI and the estate of the all the mathematicians who developed
 the formulas should split up all money you make from  your program.

         See what I'm getting at?  If we attached a monetary value to
 every idea developed,  societal progress would grind to a halt.  The
 sharing of ideas, free of charge, between people, has made possible
 every major development of any kind.  Do you think the inventor of the
 wheel should receive royalties for every car made?  Do you think any
 one person really invented the wheel, instead of it being the result
 of a succession of developments, made by many different people?  Crude
 opportunism may make money, and frankly anybody dumb enough  to buy
 whatever you write probably deserves to lose their money, but a
 program is just an idea, and ideas are never the property of one
 person.

 -Andy
 (btw, the text of this message is public domain, and may be altered,
 copied and redistributed in any way you choose without fear of
 prosecution) >>


I believe Stuart is trying to say that if someone writes a program,
(regardless of the format that it is in) that the author could ask for some
kind of payment in exchange for his efforts of creating the source code. For
example, all of the software companies for computers out there, they didn't
invent the computer or VB or Pascal or C++, and yet they charge for each and
every program they create using these "public domain" languages. This includes
TI BASIC, because it is just like how it is with computers.

-fB
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