Ed Burnette donosi priču o tome kako Microsoft kopira, priznaje da je kopirao i onda to lijepo patentira. Sigurno ima još takvih slučajeva koji su rezultat pritiska na zaposlenike da patentiraju sve što se patentirati može. Ako se i ne radi o smišljenoj strategiji, konačan rezultat je na kraju isti. Iako se u ovom slučaju radi o Microsoftu, slična praksa je i u ostalim velikim poduzećima s patentiranim pritiskom.
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Komentari
29. siječnja 2007. 18:42
Problem nije u kopiranju već u patentiranju kopiranog...dakle, obrušavaš se na potpuno krivu stvar...
29. siječnja 2007. 18:58
GIMP nije "copycat" Photoshopa i to je jasno svakome koji je koristio jedan i drugi program. Druga je stvar što GIMP guraju kao alternativu Photoshopu, pa neki kao kokoši ponavljaju da je klon Photoshopa. Nije. Zajedničko im je to što su namijenjeni obradi bitmapiranih slika, a kod obrade takvih slika imaš standardne procedure koje se ponavljaju u svim takvim programima. Način rada s jednim i s drugim se dosta razlikuje.
Činjenica je da su mnogi OS programi nastali u težnji da se kopira neki komercijalni program, ali isto tako je činjenica da te kopije u pravilu ne postižu neki uspjeh. Rijetko se za koji OS program može reći da je klon nekog komercijalnog programa.
Ali ako neki program služi za istu namjenu kao i komercijalni program ne može se reći da je klon ili kopija. Npr. Blender je uspješan, ali bi bilo glupo reći da je Maya ili 3D Max klon.
30. siječnja 2007. 05:22
Microsoft zahtjev za patentom u slučaju BlueJ.
30. siječnja 2007. 09:43
priče na blogu Lead Product Managera za VSE.
30. siječnja 2007. 12:22
najbolje da je netko patentirao kotac prije par tisuca godina, pa me bas zanima gdje bi danas bili...
Kada Microsoft kopira od nekog drugog jedan minorni dijalog, dize se odmah "bura u casi vode". A kada neki drugi kopiraju citavu ideju i implementaciju jednog Officea (mislim pri tome na Open Office), onda nikom nista!
U ovom primjeru kojeg Vuk iznosi, BlueJ se nije zalio na Microsoft zbog kradje, nego zbog toga sto Microsoft nije u svom proizvodu spomenuo BlueJ kao svoj "izvor inspiracije", sto je neosporno neeticno.
Medjutim, slicna stvar dogadja se itekako i u open-source "komjunitiju". Recimo, ako procitate tekst "The Ethics of Free Software" velikog Bertranda Meyersa, tvorca programskog jezika Eiffel (taj tekst bi i inace trebao procitati svatko tko drzi do vlastite sposobnosti razlikovanja dobra i zla u svijetu softvera!), u tom tekstu cete naci na primjer ovaj izvadak:
Many free-software products are “copycat” versions of commercial software. The GNU project indeed made its mark by providing quality replacements for dozen of Unix utilities, from awk and yacc to troff and cc. (It is ironic that, even though the goal of the project, quoted above, was to replace Unix with a free operating system, most of its results were for a long time used mostly on commercial Unix systems.) Such tools usually do not raise a legal issue: it is considered acceptable to start from a tool’s specification and reimplement an equivalent version, as long as you don’t use any of the original code. The ethical picture is not as clear, especially given the uncompromising nature of the attacks on commercial software developers, abundantly illustrated earlier. By reimplementing someone’s design, you are not stealing his code, but you are taking his ideas. That by itself is not unethical; building on the insights of others is in fact an integral part of the scientific process — at least as long as you respect them. Respect implies, in particular, acknowledgment.
Many open-source software developer seem to think they are somehow above this rule. Take the book Gimp: the GNU Image Manipulation Program by Michael J. Hammel, published in 1999 by SSC (publishers of Linux Journal). It includes a 4-page acknowledgment section, stating at the beginning that (cited) “Of course, there are the original authors of the GIMP, Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis. At the time of the GIMP’s original release, they were undergraduate students at the University of California at Berkeley. [...] The story goes something like this: Spencer and Peter [decided] that a Photoshop-like tool for UNIX systems would be a fun thing to do.”
GIMP is indeed a free-software “copycat” of Adobe’s Photoshop commercial product. What’s striking here is that nowhere do the four pages of acknowledgments include any suggestion that the people who designed Photoshop at Adobe might, possibly, deserve a modicum of recognition too. This absence, unfortunately typical, shows a grave ethical lapse. That the Adobe developers were paid for their efforts does not remove the need to acknowledge their contribution. They invented a brilliant design and worked hard to implement it. However generous the authors of GIMP may have been to the world by producing a “free” imitation of that invention, they could not have done it without the anterior contribution of the Photoshop folks, and Adobe’s money.