Re: Ten years later

On Mar 6, 12:46 am, Herbert Kleebauer <k...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Knowledge has to be free (software is nothing but a form of knowledge).

Why is that?
What happens when the cost of obtaining that knowledge is very high?
Should the person(s) who paid the price of that knowledge be forced to
give it up without renumeration? Why on earth would they ever do that
*twice*.

And nobody should have the right to claim exclusive rights on knowledge.

To my knowledge, no one does. You're mistaken if you think copyrights
or patents give someone exclusive rights to knowledge.


If you don't want that other get the same knowledge as you, keep
it as your secret.

And that is the end result. If knowledge is expensive to obtain and
there is no "payback" for obtaining that knowledge, then it is kept
secret. Worse, often such "knowledge" dies with the discoverer.

But if knowledge is made public, then everybody
should be able to use this knowledge without any restrictions.

Again: at that time what motivation is there for someone to discover
the knowledge that is expensive?

Again:
patents are the biggest crime ever invented by a human brain.

Not at all. Patents expire and the knowledge becomes public domain,
freely usable by the public for any purpose. And patents give people
motivation to expend the effort and pay the costs to obtain
knowledge. Basically, patents are a good thing. What is bad about
patents is how they are administered (e.g., granting patents on
obvious things, granting patents on existing knowledge, etc.).

I a piece of knowledge is truly useful, waiting 18 years to be able to
use it is no big deal. After all, what if that information hadn't been
discovered (or had been kept secret) for those same 18 years? The
difference is that someone wouldn't have been able to look at the
patent and come up with some additional ideas, independent of that
patent, based on what they had learned from it.

Basically what you're crying about is "I can't spend the money to
discover all this stuff, so I want to force people to let me use their
ideas, free of charge, even though they'd prefer I not do so." Sorry,
I don't have a whole lot of empathy for that attitude.

Cheers,
Randy Hyde


.

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