[clug] Re: A most interesting read, most interesting

Peter Anderson peter.anderson at internode.on.net
Sat Dec 30 23:30:01 GMT 2006


Martijn van Oosterhout said:

"...I have certainly never assigned ownership rights to anybody. And 
please don't say that people who develop open source have done so. They 
have simply published under a fairly liberal licence, but it's certainly 
not public domain. At the very least they retain the right of 
attribution..."

Martijn, I not sure a lawyer would agree with your interpretation. 
Equally, I think that if you put Simply put, once you have published 
your 'ideas' as open source you have given 'the world' unfettered access 
to them to do with them what ever they want. Usually all you ask in 
return is that they acknowledge your original ideas. So although you 
might think that you have not given up ownership of your ideas, 
effectively you have.

I think you and I have quite different views about logic; your "roads" 
example is a red herring - roads could not be construed as a new or 
novel idea or invention (a road constructed from papier mache and 
suspended by skyhooks might be a new or novel idea; Northbourne Avenue 
is NOT a new or novel idea (on second thoughts, it might be novel for 
people who don't live in the ACT ;-) ). For my part, I will agree to 
disagree and let the discussion move on.

This has got to be one of the more lively discussions of 2006!

Regards,
Peter
-- 

Peter Anderson

E: peter.anderson at internode.on.net
W: http://www.users.on.net/~peter.anderson/ 
<http://www.users.on.net/%7Epeter.anderson/>
P: +61 (0)2 4472 2274
M: +61 (0)418 249 648

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to 
conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the 
introduction of a new order of things — Niccolo Machiavelli, /The 
Prince/, ch. 6


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