1. Re: Bill
A long time ago in a land far away lived a young man named Bill. He was
very good with the simple computers that existed in those days. He wrote
some programs that were a common interface between the various hardware
devices. People liked the interface and bought his programs. They wrote
clever programs to extend what Bill had done in his garage. Bill rewrote those
programs and incorporated them into his own system, and then even more
people bought "his" ideas and he became very rich and never shared any
credit with those who had really invented the clever programs that he used
to make money.
Today there is a young man named Mike who is a whiz with computers. He
is writing some programs to get various computer languages to use a common
interpreter. He has talked to some companies and they like his work and are
going to give him lots of money. He has asked the inventer of one of the key
clever programs to give him the source code so he won't have to rewrite it all
by himself, but has made it plain that he intends to claim it as his own.
I'm no lawyer, but there do seem to be some similarities, even though I've
probably totally misunderstood a lot of the details.
JOHN
