From owner-freebsd-chat Sat May 13 16:48:21 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in (theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in [144.16.71.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id B02C337B63E for ; Sat, 13 May 2000 16:48:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in) Received: (qmail 31054 invoked from network); 13 May 2000 23:48:13 -0000 Received: from theory7.physics.iisc.ernet.in (qmailr@144.16.71.127) by theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in with SMTP; 13 May 2000 23:48:13 -0000 Received: (qmail 23484 invoked by uid 211); 13 May 2000 23:48:10 -0000 Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 05:18:09 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan To: "G. Adam Stanislav" Cc: Rahul Siddharthan , W Gerald Hicks , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why are people against GNU? WAS Re: 5.0 already? Message-ID: <20000514051809.N22405@physics.iisc.ernet.in> References: <391D4DAD.FD80980A@picusnet.com> <003b01bfbcdc$6059fb40$a164aad0@kickme> <391D71FE.1570F551@asme.org> <20000513205610.A22103@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <3.0.6.32.20000513143506.00895650@mail85.pair.com> <20000514010614.A16058@happy.checkpoint.com> <391DDB3E.8DFFD8D0@mindspring.com> <20000514041848.K22405@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <3.0.6.32.20000513181415.00890300@mail85.pair.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0.1i In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20000513181415.00890300@mail85.pair.com>; from redprince@redprince.net on Sat, May 13, 2000 at 06:14:15PM -0500 X-Operating-System: Linux 2.2.14 alpha X-Question: Do you enjoy reading pointless headers? Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org G. Adam Stanislav said on May 13, 2000 at 18:14:15: > At 04:18 14-05-2000 +0530, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > >by borrowing ideas you don't decrease the number of ideas > >in the world. > > Sure you do! If you expect your ideas to be stolen with no rewards to you, > soon you will stop coming up with new ideas. Not because you lost your > ability but because you have no motivation. In that case, research in universities should have come to a standstill by now. It's not "stealing", it's "sharing". > This is precisely why former Communist countries were such a failure > economically. There was no reward for innovation, so there was no > innovation. Now we see a surge of creativity coming out of there. It was > not born overnight. It was always there, but it stayed dormant. Actually they always did well in basic research. Some of the most important physics this century came from Russia. They didn't do well technologically because of government-controlled industries and lack of competition. Technological improvement comes about when several companies compete to produce similar products. Incentives through patents and royalties can help there up to a point. But when it gets to the stage when one is effectively giving a monopoly to a company through patents for a basic idea, rather than a specific manufactured product design, then one is killing competition and quality will eventually go out the window. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message