On 15 Jul 2002, Gilad Ben-Yossef wrote:
> If Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin or whatever pharaceutical developing > Polio vacine were required to give away the result of their reseachand > 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? as you can see from your own observation, the process of generating drugs was much simpler, and much cheaper, then it is now. a single researcher with limited resources could have discovered a drug. this is much harder to do currently, since the rlevant deseases are much more sophisticated. fact is, the price of producing peniciline was much much much much much lower then price of producing drugs today. if you'd have used those methods today, you'd have gotten many ill-used drugs (there are still some such cases in the 20th century, see the case of the 'talydomid'). this implies that you can't perform proper drug research in open-source manner - you need much more money and resources. so i think your bringing up that story and applying it to today's situation is a little far fetched. and the state of computer programming now is not as "backwards" as the state of medicine was back in salk's time. > 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, documentinghis > 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... so you realy think you can completely replace commercial software with free software? this is a guess, which is as good as a guess claiming you can't do that. the fact is that most software is still commercial, so we have no evidence regarding whether the model can scale. to me, this model sounds sometime close to communism, much more then to capitalism, and as you can see around you, capitalism is currently winning, while cummunism lags behind and is loosing ground. > 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. not 'unfortionate' for them. they'll just make sure they can do that. the idea is that most people _are_ driven by greed - see the salaries high tech people started getting in the late 90s, as opposed to the salaries people get in other industries - what is that, other then sheer greed? did you see anyone saying "don't give me so much money, i don't need that" ? the problem is that 'earning a living' has a very flexible and subjective definition. if you try to artifically limit that - you're getting something which is as un-natural as what you claim 'owning ideas' is. > 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. now, lets consider the 'naturality' problem - is there a problem with having slaves? it was natural for years, that slavery existed, and benefited the culture. after all, what is the feudal society that existed all over europe for years, if not slavery in disguise? what about having kings? for years there were kings, and their people were at their mercy. it was natural, no? so you might say that 'owning ideas' is not natural. but that's not realy the question. the question is - will allowing people to own ideas be useful? will its benefits to society outweight its flaws, or the other way around? i think you could agree that having 100% unlimited protection of ideas is bad. i think you will also agree that having 0% protection is bad as well (for example, i believe you'll agree that attributing ideas to the people who thought about them is something that should somehow be protected. if someone comes in and claims they have invented your ideas - you will get quite upset - and this got nothing to do with someone coming in and _using_ your ideas. if we can agree on these two points - what is left to do is find some balance that we can agree on. > 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. as to who should own the idea - that's also debateable. if a person gets funding from a company, and uses this funding to make some research, that brings up some ideas - its not completely obvious that the inventor should get 100% control of the idea (assuming your notion of idea protection) -- guy "For world domination - press 1, or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator." -- nob o. dy ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
