From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Dec 22 1999 - 06:06:33 MST
On Tue, 21 Dec 1999, Brian Atkins wrote:
> > I have two possible paths before me:
> > 1) I can go work as a contract programmer for some XYZ company
> > programming whatever they would like to have programmed.
> > 2) I can *invent* things that may contribute to the productivity
> > of society, patent those inventions and have companies & organizations
> > coming to me to license those inventions.
> >
> > If you elimiminate patent/copyright/trademark law, you eliminate
> > the motivation for (2). At that point I'm going to go and be a
> > stupid contract programmer because there is nothing to prevent
> > anyone from stealing anything I invent.
>
> Nooooo. There is a 3rd option that any good capitalist knows: after
> you invent your widget, you form your own business to sell and
> develop it- thereby making yourself a lot of $$$ (you hope). Patenting
> something and then sitting there doing nothing with it except suing
> others for money is the height of laziness/decadence. Anti-extropian
> even?
I will grant the point. However, I've "formed businesses" and believe
me the process is not easy. Unless you have some very very clever
marketing idea that essentially creates a new industry, it shouldn't be
attempted without some protection from the gorillas that might come
to squat on your turf.
However, I don't think "anti-extropian" comes into the picture.
Since being Extropian involves "rational thought", if you feel it
is more rational for you to spend your time inventing rather than
building businesses (i.e. your personal productivity is greater
in one area than the other), then it may be *quite* rational for
you to pursue the approach of doing nothing but inventing
and letting the lawyers deal with making you money.
In the long run you could probably only judge this strategy in
retrospect. If an industry based on your patents were to develop
only very slowly, then yes, it would make more sense to develop
it yourself. On the other hand if you were a fantastic inventor
(code writer, etc.) it might be far more extropic for you to
do this as much as you can and hand the stuff over to people doing
business development or even putting it in the public domain.
However, putting stuff into the public domain *can* diminish the
profit margins so significantly that nobody will want to get
involved promoting & educating about the idea/product and that
will result in a very long lead time for it to be accepted.
Witness the fact that Linux was around for years before it caught on.
It will be interesting to watch the Linux vendors. They seem to
be riding a wave with a limited time frame (from when people
become aware of a product up to the point where the market is
saturated). I look at these and say "these are packaging and
education companies". Whether they earn enough to pay people to
actually improve the product in the long run is in my mind a big
question. [I will state for the record that I think open source
is great and that Linux is "packaged" well in that it installs
fairly easily, but in terms of actual code quality or implementation
of advanced architectural features it leaves *a lot* to be desired.]
Robert
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