Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: That would be public domain
Author: David McCusker Posted: 9/10/2000; 9:46:30 AM Topic: Guido and Richard Msg #: 21109 (In response to 21100) Prev/Next: 21108 / 21110
Wes Felter: Someone might be tempted to think that if the original author had sold it, he would have made the money instead of whoever merely repackaged it. But this probably ignores a lot of other factors.Let's call the original author Oin, and the repackager Nori.
I'm familiar with that logic. :-) Oin was fine right up until Nori made some money, but then some injury is perceived. It sounds like when my older son gets a popsicle and the younger son is injured when he finds out, because he didn't get a popsicle.
Yes, it does ignore a lot of other factors. What if Oin was not prepared to market? Or to provide easy payment terms? Or to be responsible to future demand and ongoing tech support? Customers might be paying for a host of other elements only indirectly related to the actual goods delivered.
And almost certainly Nori is creating a situation where Oin can benefit from good will through a trivial effort on Oin's part. If at any point Nori resists an effort of Oin's to benefit from this good will, such resistance can be leveraged for free publicity so good that Oin could hardly buy such entertaining PR as being wronged by a bad guy like Nori. Oin might even hope that Nori would be so stupid as to try shutting out Oin (perhaps if they have an old grudge).
Anyway, going back to basics. If Oin's original objective is satisfied by giving away something for free, it's hard for the objective to be impaired by someone else making money. In most cases I can think of, the objective is actually helped. This is because most reasons for distributing something for free intend to benefit from network effect, and when someone is making money, the network effect is happening.
The only way in which Oin can lose is when giving away something for free actually results in a reduction of Oin's rights. (Besides the obvious one of loss of exclusive control rights.) As long as Oin is at least equal in rights to others who want to play, then Oin is doing okay. But if Nori can somehow assume ownership of Oin's work, so that Oin has less rights than Nori, then Oin has a problem.
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