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To: andreas_wonisch who wrote (43844)	6/13/2001 9:46:40 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Andreas, What's with the Physics theory argument Brian provided? Newton created a theory for gravitation. So, according to your logic, it belonged to him. I think in IP, there should be a way out. For example, if 2 people independently arrive at the same discovery, independently, to me, it is not the first one to copyright / patent is the owner. Or if a third person independently, without any input from the first 2 arrives at the same discovery, I am not sure he owes the first 2 people anything. I am not sure it is a good idea to grant broad patents, copyrights that apply to concepts. Patents should be fairly narrow. I was not too crazy about the software look and feel law suits, or about silly things like trying to copyright "/" character, or "i" prefix. Applying this to software, IMO, if you want to write your own OS that looks very much like Win2K, go ahead, spend a billion dollars and do it. The only other way to own it is to pay MSFT what they ask for, which is I believe $100 to $150 for the top end model, W2k Pro (if you are smart about acquiring it), or some $50 to $75 for one of the lesser OS like Me, or 95 or 98 versions. These prices are very popular in the corporate world. The corporations made the Microsoft monopoly by standardising on it, (thus suffocating all the other vendors). Private individuals can jump on the MSFT / corporate bandwagon, if they wish to and are willing to pay the going price, or they can use any of the alternatives (Linux, other flavors of Unix, OS/2, Mac Os, Be OS, Caldera DOS, etc). Some of them allow, even encourage free copying of their software and source code. Nothing lasts forever. When enough people are dissatisfied with MSFT (and are willing to put their $$$ where there mouth is), there will be viable alternatives. In normal business world, the businesses are actually thrilled about the "customers" who are not willing to spend money, or are too cheap to actually go to their competitors and make THEIR lives miserable. So I think Microsoft should actually encourage the complainers and software pirates to move to Linux or other alternatives (instead of pirating MSFT software, and complain about it on top ot it). Joe