Think about your own use of intellectual property and how you would feel about others using your intellectual property

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For many years I wondered over this question, especially working in IT field and coming up with creative solutions to solve the assigned objectives. I work for a company, which provided me with the tools and environment and support where something creative was born, yet the solution I came up was for sole benefit of the people who used it for their day-to-day tasks. On one hand it made me feel proud and happy as my end product is helping my friends and colleagues, on the other hand an idea what if my company would have paid for this product, they would have paid much more than the wages I am being paid for. I came to realize that I would be OK with others using my intellectual property but will not feel great or appreciate much if others made money based on my intellectual property. Working in IT field, we always download software, we look at scripts or we google for information on how others solved the problem. If I want to find out how to use make speedometer graphs in Excel, I do go to YouTube to browse how others did it and either use or re-engineer one’s idea. I feel that sharing and collaboration is an integral part of us. The only aspect is the moral feelings of ones who came up with the idea, but someone else is profiting off it without sharing with the inventor.

A good example I use for myself, is the Linux and Ubuntu. Linux is free software that is open to anyone to use for personal or commercial purpose. There are thousands contributors to the Linux software that share their work with everyone else. Ubuntu is a version of a Linux that has been commercialized by Canonical, but to a limited extend. According to Ubuntu’s Intellectual Property Rights (IPRights) Policy, anyone is free to use or redistribute unmodified Ubuntu for personal, commercial or for organization’s own use. Anyone can modify for their own or their organization’s use. The only thing that IPRights policy is concerned is the use of Canonical’s trademarks within modified Ubuntu that is being commercially re-distributed. According to the policy anyone can re-distribute modified Ubuntu but either has to remove the trademark icons from the source code or get a license. This is a case of sharing the information and intellectual property with everyone as long as they do not profit from it, or share the profit with you.