Re: The thread formerly known as [...]

[Adam Turoff <ziggy@panix.com>]

Schuyler wrote:
> You know, in the course of a long talk on this very subject, I tried
> to justify Open Source distribution as not merely a viable but indeed
> an optimal end of software development to my mother, an educated but
> mostly computer-illiterate person - a good exercise, try it some time -
> and we came to the following discussion points:
> 
> (a) Software is definitely a form of intellectual property, 
> [... software has little intrinsic use, but obvious extrinsic use...]
> 
> (b) My mother observed similarities between hacker culture and many
> Native American cultures. [..prestige and gift cultures...]

This is indeed a very valuable exercise.  I never thought of the first 
you mentioned.

The point I stress most is that IP as expressed in software "scales"
(for lack of a better term), much like other intellectual pursuits.

For example, it took the most brilliant mathematicians in the world
centuries to discover and codify the physics and calculus that is
tought in most high schools in this country today.  It took most
cultures millenia to discover the utility of the number '0', yet the
concept is easily grasped by a 4 year old today.

Similarly, the first operating systems and compilers took man-centuries
to develop the first time, but the techniques they pioneered tend to be
easy to comprehend once discovered.  As a result, compiler writing and
OS implementation is frequently a 3-6 person project over a term or two
in a decent Comp Sci curriculum today - taking on the order of one
man-year to implement (and then throw away).

If art were taught like that today, one would expect works of the
quality of the Mona Lisa or David from freshman mid-term assignments at
a decent art school.

Z.

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