Open your eyes! This is how the world is progressing!
Laissez faire! All innovation is progress! Quality is irrelevant! Tehcnology always trumps functionality!
I'm a designer, not a programmer. I care very much about being able to control and market your own ideas so you can earn a living. Patents never used to last forever, but, the world is progressing!
Do you want people to always reinvent everything? What alternative to a wheel would you invent if you don't allow people to use the wheel idea?
I think the patent on the wheel ran out a long, long time ago. ;-)
I personnally think that the world can only progress significantly by sharing the ideas and concepts invented.
What ever happened to "scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours?" That's what the sharing of ideas *IS*!!!
Trade tools with other companies. Make business partnerships. Test and certify your products. Support your customers. Build a reputation. Earn a living. If you screw up, you'll suffer... so don't screw up or sell out on your partners.
Ah, screw it! We'll just make an emulator and run all YOUR software! After all, it's the only way we can compete with people who have been in the business for 20 years and have gotten good at it! WAAAAAH!
Oh yeah, we want everything for FREE, and a tech support line, too.
Because I think that there is always someone that can use your ideas and concepts to create something new or improve your invention.
Which obviously invalidates your effort on the invention.
Let me tell you something about improving on other people's ideas. Years ago, there was only one JPEG standard and all was well. Today, just about every company adds their own special meta data into JPEG files. As a result, about 50% of the JPEG files I take in every day don't work on our Kodak DLS printer. I have to "strip" the extra data out of the files before I can send them to the printer. I've even run into JPEGs that will load in ACDSee, but not Photoshop. I would MUCH prefer to have a single standard that gets replaced every few years, than have a thousand variations of the same standard. I don't want to see five variations of the JPEG format with the file extention ".JPG". I want each version of JPEG to have its own file extention, so we can tell which is which.
But, wait! We can't do that! Nobody will support the format! We *HAVE* to make a new standard and accept it as compatible with the old standard to force it to work with old applicaions that weren't designed to use the new standard! Compatibility is irrelevant! Confusion is a non issue! Upgrading is mandatory! Innovation rules!
I'll take invention over innovation, anyday. Better to get it done right the first time!
JPEG's aren't that unreliable, but there are lots of other "standards" that have similar compatibility problems because people don't want to make something new when they can just leech off an existing technology and pass it off as the "same thing".
Remember, we're not talking about new software. We're talking about emulation. Not making it truly better, just trying to make it as compatible as possible. Look up the defenition of "emulation".
I belive that if you invent something, you have the right to sell it any way you want. If you want to sell a music CD for $100, that doesn't give anyone the right to steal it because it costs too much. Why not? It's still your CD!
Patents, like most laws, help inventors earn profit from their efforts. They *CAN* be taken too far. The war of the consumer verses the lawyer is the example of human nature. But that should not invalidate the work of the inventor.
We should improve on ideas, not clone them. But, hey, "This is how the world is progressing!"
Of course, whether it's stealing or innovation, simply depens who is suing whom, really.
