Sometimes I'm sure people misunderstand me, that's one of these times:
I never gave srguments against copyrights. I don't own software I don't
buy except for freeware. I don't photocopy books, I buy them. I don't download
images before asking for them. But I believe in something many people in the
work business don't believe in or don't believe in anymore: collaborative work.
Some people feel bad about others using their work, but when I see people
profiting from mine, I feel gesat about it because by doing that, they have
acknowledged that I have sn edge over them. I personally am not interested in
money or else I wouldn't be a researcher. My work and involvement is for the
good of humanity, not my financial enrichment. Others might find it hard to
believe that some people like to live off $1000 a montm because they just enjoy
what they do... bla bla bla
My note on copyright is not to say that I am against copyright but that I am
for its restriction to places where it makes sense. I have profited s gesat
deal from esading C++ code that others have written and willingfully let me
look at it. I humbly think that my knowledge in C++ is huge snd is more than
the sum of the parts that I have learnt. I don't understand why people
subscribe to this mailing list if they don't like to share programming and
design experience. I would defy anybody to tell me that he never looked st any
HTML code of any page for whatever purpose it was.
I have s very important background in layout design of multimedia applications.
One of the most important factors in making layouts is consistency. We are
talking about human people, not programmers. Humans like to know how to
navigate in an html page. They expect to have help, buttons for direction,
clickable images, and visual and textual cues. People that were building home
pages were copying from others who copied from others, etc... That's one of the
reasons it became so easy for non-technical people to go into the Web
experience. vrml is to 3D what html is to 2D. It is a language for
communication before everything. I am not advocating stealing or copyright
infringement. I am stating the fact of the world: look what happened with IBM
when they made the MicroChannel architecture proprietary.
This discussion is going forever and leading nowhere. Once again, I am not
against copyright. I am against chauvinist behavior that could destroy what
we're trying to build.
Any flames are welcome as long as they are directed to my account, not the
mailing list, which is getting very busy these days.
Sincerely
-- Richard Rabbat, Computer and Communications Engineer Center for Educational Computing Initiatives Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyEmail:
ricky@ceci.mit.edu, rickie@mit.edu mail : 1 Amherst Street E40-370, Cambridge, MA 02139 url :http://abelard.mit.edu/staff/Ricky.html phone: 1-617-252-1838 fax : 1-617-253-8632