On May 14, 9:17 pm, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <l...@geek- central.gen.new_zealand> wrote: > In message > <e5a031a3-d097-4a63-b87a-7ddfb9e90...@n15g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>, Patrick > > Maupin wrote: > > After all, lots of software ideas proved their worth in proprietary > > systems, and then were later cloned by FOSS developers. > > And vice versa. Everybody, whether working in closed or open environments, > builds on the work of everybody else. Rsync pioneered the idea of doing > transfers of incremental changes to a large file across a network without > being able to have the two versions of the file on the same machine to do a > direct side-by-side comparison; Microsoft copied the idea in more recent > versions of its server software. Andrew Tridgell could easily have patented > his idea, but he chose not to. > > Apple pioneered the idea of using 3D graphics hardware to do window > compositing on the desktop; the Compiz folks went on to figure out how to do > this efficiently. Microsoft also copied the idea, but forgot the > “efficiently” part. > > Free Software also benefits from networking effects that are not available > to proprietary developers. The resources available to proprietary developers > are proportional to the size of the company they work for; typically they do > not share software with competitors. Whereas the Free Software community is > like one huge company in this regard, available to freely pass ideas and > code back and forth. This has led to the creation of ideas that proprietary > companies simply cannot match.
Well said. Pat -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
