Ideas are free (Was - Re: [xml-dev] Another reason patents suck)

[Peter R Elliott <axit@paradise.net.nz>]

hi all
it came to pass that Dave also said:
>>> In particular, the same technique is used in Netscape/Mozilla.  It would
> be interesting to discover who did it first.
> Right on. I thank Microsoft for teaching me that lick, and they would thank
> Netscape.
> And it's pretty likely that the Netscape person saw something like that
> somewhere else and adapted it.
> That's how ideas spread among software designers.
> "Only steal from the best."
> It didn't start with the Web -- it's been going on for a long, long time.
> Just like literature and story-telling. Goes back to the caves.
>
> Dave

and so my lurker's vow of silence is broken. because the way i've always seen it good ideas freely circulate, in the same way that the winds and tides do. always have done so and always will - inspite of the best efforts of the lawyer hordes to tie them down and turn them into property.
ideas don't belong to anyone, least of all those who have them. just listen to those creative minds who most impress us and you'll find somewhere in their work this idea freely expressed. to those of us who work at this software development game this can be a really painfull truth to come to terms with - that our best hacks are not ours, or our boss's, to own, unlike our worst. if they're any good they go out there into the 'wild' and replicate.
such is the beauty of creative thought at it's best that the current efforts to create a bondaged patented version of the net will flounder and fail. i hope.

cheerfully yours
peter