We are now into 2008
Tis the end of the season for fairy stories, but here is a late entrant
Once upon a time
a long long time ago
there was a tribe of people called GSers (let us call them geezers) who had wonderful crossbows
That shows how long ago it was. Crossbows had only just been invented
Truly they were the most effective crossbows in the land. Or so the geezers said to themselves anyway.
Their evidence was a bit thin. Certainly their crossbows were better than the ones they had before. Certainly they had never met anyone else with better crossbows. And a few of them had been around a bit and never seen anything as good. Oh, and the crossbows did succeed in winning a few battles.
But mainly they were proud, and continually congratulated themselves on the miraculous effectiveness of their crossbows. And the more they told each other, the more they believed it.
Proud they were. But also worried.
What if other tribes would be able to copy their crossbows?
What a disaster that would be.
The single highest geezer priority had to be to stop that happening.
How to achieve that?
Well, some geezers had got into the habit of travelling to neighbouring lands, for a bit of fun, a bit of trading, pillaging, that sort of thing.
Obviously in future those people could not be allowed to bring any crossbows with them, or think about trading for them. The very mention of the word crossbow would be outlawed. (and outlaws were serious things in those days!)
The geezers who developed crossbows and other fancy new things worked with people from other tribes, to get ideas, materials, work done etc.
Obviously in future those people could not be allowed to talk or share anything related to crossbows.
The geezers even got nervous about using the crossbows in battle. What if one should land on an enemy and then be picked up and copied by some lucky survivor? No, the only thing was to keep the crossbows in reserve for the direst emergencies only.
Finally, what about geezers who might be captured? Or even traitor geezers! They might reveal the secrets to other tribes. So it was decided that as few geezers as possible should know everything about crossbows in future.
The geezers all lived in a well protected castle, as tribes used to do then.
The castle had an inner sanctum, a keep, if you will.
So the geezers put all the crossbows in the keep, kept them in the keep, if you will. Normal geezers weren't allowed to see the crossbows. People maintaining and improving the crossbows had to lock themselves away in the keep and never talk to anyone else in case they inadvertently gave stuff away, sometimes for years on end. These poor people became a bit weird, even by the standards of the time - who wouldn't with no contact to the outside world!
The keep itself was to be guarded by an elite group of soldiers (for some strange reason, they had come from a different tribe) called ip. Yes, just ip. But pronounced strangely, something like eyepee.
The ip became a law unto themselves. They grew influence in the tribe, even though none of them had ever invented anything or even fought real battles with other tribes.
And their influence spread around the geezers. All the geezers were frightened of the ip, in awe of them almost. So much so, they became very protective of the ip themselves and started using their own language. "We must protect our ip" became a common rallying cry for geezers everywhere.
Anyway, all was well in the castle. Everyone knew their place. No one could successfully invade, or so the geezers told themselves, not while they had the crossbows. This happy situation lasted for many years. Golden years. The geezers were so proud, and, now they had the ip, they weren't really worried either.
But then some tribe attacked them with machine guns and wiped them out in two days flat.
Poor geezers!
The last prisoner geezers at least were happy they hadn't been invaded with crossbows! But when the invading tribe discovered the crossbows in the keep (the ip didn't really fight very hard, they were really only bureaucrats when things got bloody, there was even a rumour they offered their services to the invaders) the invaders only laughed.
Why, they said, look as these quaint outdated crossbows! I remember those from 30 years ago! That was from the time before the super-gizmo crossbow became widely available. Which then morphed into gunpowder, and then to guns. And I hear our gurus have just invented things called planes, and bombs. How quaint that these geezers have preserved these relics so loveingly. We can put them in our museum (the crossbows...and even some of the geezers).
The end.
(or at least the end for the geezers)
Hopefully the moral of this little tale is clear. How do things improve? By collaboration, by testing, by exposure, by synthesis! In this age, the blog and open age, this happens faster than ever. Now, I wouldn't go so far as to abandon our IP altogether. But certainly I suggest we head a few aeons in that direction! Every time you hear someone (or yourself) saying "we must protect our ip" let a small voice in your head remember the fate of the geezers!
Happy new year, geezers!
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