Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : William
Date : Mon Sep 19 2005 11:21 am

"Antoon Pardon" <apardon@forel.vub.ac.be> wrote in message
news:slrndita90.4tm.apardon@rcpc42.vub.ac.be...
>
> The glory. As far as I understand human nature, very few people try to
> invent something to get rich. Fame and glory seem to be more involved.

I don't think the history of invention supports that idea very
well. Most of the industrial era's inventors had money on their
minds from early on. Otherwise, why would the Wright brothers,
for one example, have spent so much effort to guarantee a profit
from manned, powered flight? They could have gotten the glory
much more easily if they hadn't been so secretive for so long.

The ones in it for the glory seem to have been those who were
wealthy enough not to need a paycheck. There weren't that many
of those. (The woman who invented the dishwasher springs to mind,
but having provided herself with an adequate tool to wash her
valuable dishes safely, further development seems to have been
purely profit-motivated. That suggests the #2 reason to invent:
solve a problem for yourself; this moves the profit motive to
the "futher development" side of inventing.)

-Wm

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