Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Free Free Flow (was: Re: Intellectual property/copyrights)
Message-ID: <1812@looking.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jul 88 05:31:55 GMT
References: <9160@cisunx.UUCP> <1801@uhccux.UUCP> <807@netxcom.UUCP> <1804@looking.UUCP> 
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 54

In article  webber@aramis.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) writes:
>It is clear that things would take a bit longer, but like is there a
>rush?  If the first 20 people who think up the idea of the spreadsheet
>decide they are not going to go thru with it because once they make
>one anyone could and they figure that they couldn't recover their development
>costs, is it going to be the ruin of civilization? 

Thanks for picking an example I know intimately.  When VisiCalc was
launched in Personal Software's 10 by 10 booth at NCC '79 in New York, I
was there demonstrating it.  People today may have a tough time imagining
it, but we had to hit people over the head to get them interested.  People
did not get the demo and order 100 copies.  Many said, "why do I need that?"
We spent money to tell them.  Many people claim that Apple wouldn't have
made it as they did if not for Visicalc.

> [ People would eventually write it for themselves... ]

And come up with garbage, the same way that shareware and PD software
that wasn't made explicitly for mass distribution is mostly garbage.

Anybody who's been there will tell you that making a product for use by
large numbers of real people is *hard* work, work that won't get done if
there isn't an incentive.  It's easily twice to ten times as much work as
just putting a program together.  The commercial part of making a commercial
program really is 90% of the job, and people think it should be eliminated!
>
>You will forgive me while I sit here and contemplate how nice it would
>be if instead of Star Wars, Friday 13th part 99, etc., we only had movies
>made by people who were in it for the joy of making movies.
>
Well, I picked Star Wars because it's a film most people enjoyed.  The point
was there have been many works that have enriched the field, in most people's
opinions, that were EXPENSIVE to make.  Star Wars was just one example.
Without ownership of I.P., the world would not get these works, and while
Bob Webber might not get upset, a lot of others would.
>
>You mean that the only way they could beat out lotus is to make a better
>product.  Gee, shucks, wouldn't want them to have to do that.

No.  You can't beat out Lotus by making a better product today.  That's
the whole point.  You have to do *more* than make a better product.  You
might make it better and price it cheaper, like Borland plans.  You have
to be able to match the Lotus machine, or guarantee the product like
Microsoft does.  The point is that without ownership of I.P., it may
be almost impossible to unseat outdated "standards" without incentives.
>
>[So, the net is going thru another round of copyright software discussion.]

Actually, I view this as a more fundamental debate, namely the one about
whether I.P. should exist, and how it should exist.  The answer to
"is it ok to copy software" falls out of this, but it is at a different
level.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473