On Mon, 2002-07-15 at 17:41, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote:
> If Merck or Pfizer or whatever pharmaceutical developing AIDS
> cocktails were required to give away the results of their research and
> development effort to third world countries for peanuts, they would
> not bother to start their research in the first place. How would that
> help the third world countries?
If Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin or whatever pharaceutical developing
Polio vacine were required to give away the result of their reseach and
development effort to third world countries for peanutes, they would not
bother to start their reasearch in the first place.
Oh wait... they did start their research. They did give it for free not
just to third world countries but to the entire world. They did manage
to stop almost completly a disease that is just as horrible and just as
terrible as AIDS and the only reason you don't fear it today as you fear
AIDS is because these guys research and efforts. Oh, did I mention that
one of them (I think it was Salk) even tested the vaccine on himself to
make sure it's safe?
Or to put it in other words:
"Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can
put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his
product and distribute for free?"
-- Bill Gates, Open Letter to Hobbyists, 1976
"We do."
Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Paul Vixie, Alan Cox,
The Apache group, the SAMBA team, RH software, etc...
In other words:
Don't want to do the work without getting the right to keep other people
from using it? Well and good, then don't. Just don't complain. The
simple truth is that what these guys are complaining about is NOT that
they can't make a living doing these things in a freedom respecting
fashion, they are complaining that they can't get rich doing it like so.
How very unfortunate for them.
>
> > Also, these so called free market and "I want to make a profit from
> > what 'I' invent" did not take their knowledge from thin air, but
> > studied at a university or a college.
>
> And paid for that. And went to Glaxo to apply the skills they got -
> for hire. And it was 'they' who invented things, and not others, in
> part because they had invested in their education. And incidentally,
> the IP rights belong to their employers, who paid their salaries, who
> paid for the hi-tech equipment (the people who produced it also
> deserve getting paid, after all), who paid the rent, etc. Yes, there
> were quite a few financial transactions along the way to development,
> and yes, our society places a higher tag on the highly skilled labor
> involved in producing AIDS cocktails than on the low-skilled labor of
> growing maize in Africa or laying bricks in Russia. There is nothing
> inherently wrong or unjust about it.
No problem. But the right for a limited monopoly of the fruit of your
though (be it copyright or patent) is *NOT* a natrual right like your
right to other real property like your house. It's a limited monopol
granted by the state to advance the state of science and society. But if
it doesn't do what it's there for, it should be gone. Or much better -
returned to it's original form of a *limited time* (something like 7
years) granted to the original inventor. That is the *PERSON* who
invented it, a corporation couldn't have copyrights or ptents then.
Gilad.
>
> Now, let me remind ya'all that this grew really OT. ;-)
>
> --
> Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> "IBM is a pretty big company." [W. Gates]
>
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--
Gilad Ben-Yossef <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://benyossef.com
"My god, they are here. They're watching us. They're inserting pieces of
code
into BK repository while Linus is sleeping!!!" -- 'adasi' Krecicki on
lkml.
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