Hi Alan<br><br>I see this has turn into an interesting discussion, and the possibility are endless<br><br>I donT own the brick, and I dont own the bricklaying techniques, but I may want to<br>build a hotel with unique featuers, that no other hotel in the world has built before, that will give me a commercial advantage over other hotels, and that I am investing some resources in, in order to establish a source of income for me and my family (this is an entirely fictional scenario btw)<br>
<br>When the bricklayer will work for this project, he will use his bricks, and his standard techniques, and will learn new skills, and acquire new knowledge that before he did not have<br>He will not be at liberty to reuse the unique architecture which in turn supports my unique<br>
service. That does not mean that it will not give other good ideas <br><br>I am not saying this is not tricky. I am saying that when I hire a bricklayer and benefit from his skill, I need to be in agreement that he is not going to sell nor apply my unique design which supports my unique service which for me represents an economic advantage<br>
to another business next to me, or anywhere in the same 'market' which could reasonably diminish the benefits that I can derive from the effort.<br><br>Otherwise I ll tear the life out of him (metaphorically)<br><br>
So the bottom line is a clear, neat understanding of what each other party wants to get out of the deal, and a honest to god cross my heart I ll never do that.<br>Then you take your chances....<br><br>and btw I am not in business, I am in education. I cannot live with the level of stress<br>
:-)<br><br>cheers<br>PDM<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Jan 26, 2008 12:02 AM, DragonWize <<a href="mailto:dragonwize@gmail.com">dragonwize@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Hi PDM,<br><br>I see your point and agree that that situation is possible in theory.<br>In practice though I think that situation is much harder to define.<br><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> sure, but the design, the process and the creative ideas the developer did not have<br>
<br></div>That only applies to the larger idea. Often for a larger idea to<br>become reality it takes lower level creative ideas to make it happen.<br><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> i can hire any developer to do the job, the developer could not hire any client to get the<br>
> innovative functionality (that then they want to resell as their own work? whoa)<br>><br></div><div class="Ih2E3d">> I am talking about functions that were not available in commercial nor open source products before I required them, asked the devs to >code them (the creative process is in the design, implementing is a subset of design)<br>
<br></div>That is assuming that your idea is so simple that anyone could do it<br>and that every developer that did it would do it the same way. I think<br>that while possible that is a lot of assumptions to make come true. If<br>
you ask a developer to build a shopping cart system, even though there<br>are a million of them out there, that doesn't mean that developer put<br>no creative work into it and did not make advancements in speed,<br>usablity, etc because of his skill in coding for the web. The same<br>
goes true for an original idea. The developer could make no advances,<br>they could make major advances, or any where inbetween. Just as it is<br>hard to tell if a developer is not using the code it is also tell,<br>especially for someone who had to hire someone, what advances if any<br>
there were it.<br><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> I think who would be profiting from someone else's work here is the developer!<br>> (reselling my work?)<br><br></div>As a developer I would think the same thing, reselling my work?<br>
<br>My point is that *I believe* IP belongs to ideas and final products<br>and not code that is used to build them.<br><br>Ex. If Henry Ford came to me asked me to build a factory to build his<br>cars quickly. Then I used my skill to build an assembly line. Then the<br>
Wright Brothers came to be and asked for me to build a factory for<br>their planes. I would build an assembly line.<br><br>I don't see any issue here because the tool was created by me and the<br>overall product is different. If someone hires me to build a new kind<br>
of social networking site that has never been done before and I create<br>a super fast data access library while building that site, that tool<br>is mine and is my creative work. I would not re-create the social<br>networking idea that was the final product but I would re-use my code<br>
on the next pizza site I built.<br><br>Alan<br>_______________________________________________<br><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">consulting mailing list<br><a href="mailto:consulting@drupal.org">consulting@drupal.org</a><br>
<a href="http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting" target="_blank">http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting</a><br></div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Paola Di Maio <br>School of IT<br>
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