RE: A Question of Ethics (was: Overriding Acrobat User Settings)

Subject: RE: A Question of Ethics (was: Overriding Acrobat User Settings)
From: "Jane Carnall" <jane -dot- carnall -at- digitalbridges -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 15:46:51 +0100

Peter wrote:
>Should not the producer make the decision whether to open source the
>results of the efforts and capital investments?

Yes. But copyright was never intended to be eternal. And further, there are
major advantages to be had in not forcing everyone else everywhere to
reinvent the wheel. Much software technology is based on basics invented in
the days before it occurred to anyone to seek copyright on code. Further, in
a fast-moving environment, the 50-year-past-the-author's-death copyright
that was the original law, intending to allow the creator and the creator's
immediate descendants to benefit from the creator's personal intellectual
labours, hardly seems appropriate for an undying legal entity such as a
company that has not itself intellectually laboured. Some rethinking of
copyright law does seem appropriate, particularly if the thing copyrighted
is based on open source technology originally. Otherwise the situation is as
ludicrous as a company claiming a patent on Basmati rice because of some
minor gene-tweaking on top of centuries of open-source species modification.

Jane Carnall
Technical Writer, Digital Bridges, Scotland
Unless stated otherwise, these opinions are mine, and mine alone.


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Re: A Question of Ethics (was: Overriding Acrobat User Settings): From: Peter

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