Popularity through Plagiarism

[bluesmoon]

One of the things about GPL enforcement, is that violations can only be contested by the copyright holders. As an example, if I were to find out about a violation of the GPL licence in, say the linux kernel, then the most that I could do is notify the copyright holders, and leave it to them to decide what to do

Comments

[prodizy]

A genuine person might shout this out in the community and for this reason he/she might be stamped as a cribber. The cribber might hang in there or leave it for karma.

An unwise person might ignore it till it effects her/him.

Probably other genuine experts can start a blog/community/movement to help the cause.

[nvivek]

If you believe in karma, then by definition, it equals out in the long run.

I'm against intellectual property of most kinds --- property in the sense of someone owning an idea or taking credit for it.

In my current field of endeavour, I'm intensely conscious of the need to acknowledge intellectual debt. But even though I agree with it, I'm also aware that this is merely manners or politeness or how-I-was-raised etc. The net effect on humanity has nothing to do with my debt, merely with my output.

In your example, who is to say that:

a) Teaching english to children in south america is not a more important activity than being credited for an idea

b) Ideaguy's 'original' idea didn't have its roots in some old, long forgotten story told by a teacher, classmate or even the sum of all interactions with his buddies plus dog. So, whose idea is it, anyway?

In my mind, the true test is: what did you do with that idea?

[bluesmoon]

I think my only problem here is with the way Expertguy goes about acquiring ideas.

[nvivek]

There are two issues, then, that you're grappling with. One is the idea of ownership of intellectual property and the other is deception. I'm against both.

If Expertguy is mis-representing himself, then he deserves to be exposed. On the other hand, if he's merely an unscrupulous self-publicist and an egotist, you should merely dislike him and stay away from shaking his hand.

[bluesmoon]

I don't have an issue with intellectual property, and neither do any of the people who had the ideas. They've all given their ideas away freely for anyone to use. Some on their blogs, some on mailing lists, and some over lunchtime discussions. Then there's one person who claims he came up with the ideas, and this isn't like three years later when chances are that he forgot where he heard it. This is off from the presses, a day later kind of stuff.

I've haven't been affected directly, but this just makes me feel yucky.

[say_yes04]

I think we are all wise for what we do/not do with our ideas.

Finally the credit goes to the person who makes the idea visible, because the source of the same idea can at times many. Remember the idea of pre-steal? It can happen with para phrasing too, you get to know of a idea then you think about it and improve it and add some other ideas from a blog post etc.

The idea guys ambitions are what are important if he wants to be the expertguy, then he can learn a few things about publishing the idea before expressing it and then making sure its well known.

From experience idea guys tend to be an idea a day and rarely have the patience to pursue it to some sort of recognition. Once its published no point complaining, the internet labels whiners of all who complain.

[code_martial]

Increasingly, I think the modus operandi of Expertguy is approximately what you described above. I think the kind of difference you mentioned between the "fates" of Expertguy vs. Ideaguy, Hackerdude, JSGuru and Pixelgirl isn't entirely unjustifiable.

There are two things Expertguy can do with all the ideas: 1) Combine them; 2) Catalog them

Combining
It does take expertise to put together several disparate ideas into a combination that provides effective solution for one or more problems. Getting me here?

Hackerdude might know how to hack some functionality together quickly, JSGuru might know how to accomplish a nifty task in JS, etc. but either they need to collaborate themselves to produce something useful, or the Expertguy puts the pieces together.

In this case, if Expertguy takes credit for the combination, I wouldn't think of him in a negative way. If he credits the sources of individual ideas, it's great but not doing so wouldn't make him a bad person, IMHO.

CatalogingThe other thing Expertguy is looked upon for is simply

Percona Performance Conference Slides

[anonymous]

Are the "Websites on Speed" slides available?

Re: Percona Performance Conference Slides

[bluesmoon]

You can see them at http://bluesmoon.github.com/talks/websites-on-speed/