Two people on opposite sides of the world have exactly the same idea at the same time. Which one of those two people would be most morally justified in claiming to own the exclusive rights to that idea?

Should it be the first to dash through the doors of the USPTO office, with a big wad of cash in his hand?

Isn't that just further rewarding someone for already being affluent (or quick, or both), rather than rewarding him for having an original thought?

And how original are anyone's thoughts anyway?

Surely our knowledge is merely the sum of what we have been taught, and not some divine gift handed down from God, entitling the bearer to exclusive privileges. How can anyone claim exclusive rights to that which has been collected from others, such as authors; teachers; parents and peers? Are those contributors not equally entitled to attribution and rights to that knowledge? Are such contributors not also entitled to benefit from those ideas? Given the scope of where one acquires knowledge, shouldn't those beneficiaries encompass all mankind?

This is the essence of Free Software.

The following copyright notice applies only to The Associated Press; its subsidiary holdings; partners and members. To find out why, click here.

All non-derivative content of this site is © 2006 - 2008 Slated.org unless otherwise stated. No reproduction without permission. Licensed permission shall only be granted upon written request and subsequent agreement by each licensee to pay the sum of £1,000,000 (one million UK pounds sterling) per element per instance of reproduction.

You decide:

MOZILLA FIREFOX END-USER SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT

Version 3.0, May 2008

A source code version of certain Firefox Browser functionality that you may use, modify and distribute is available to you free-of-charge from www.mozilla.org under the Mozilla Public License and other open source software licenses.

Just picked this up from the Gnome-Devel mailing list:

+ ndesk-dbus, ndesk-dbus-glib (external dependency)
- good from a security point of view
- need to be in a mono-specific section of the external dependencies
(because of the special rules about depending on mono)
=> accept

Hmm, I wonder what "special rules" those would be?

Given Mono's encumbrance on Microsoft's poisonous "Intellectual Monopoly"®, that statement is both intriguing and terrifying.