"There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of man."

And that, ladies, gents, slimes and moulds, is why all technology should be free and open.

@phryk nah that's not strong enough. It's a "whoops, we didn't notice those thousands of inventors, our bad, we will notice from now on and give them credit, no problem, this is why we need patents!". It is not thousands of inventors it is everyone(or most people). We create communities and specialize to make it easier for each other to live, we trade goods and services. Inventing is a service and once it is done it is done. It is not a product that requires work to continuously produce. If I provide a room cleaning service, I quote a price for cleaning and do my job and leave. I don't quote a price and then additionally demand that everyone entering the room pay me a fee, cause they are benefitting from my "creation". That is absurd. Even more so when it's not me demanding it, but some sort of a middleman. Once the room is clean hundreds of people might enter it and benefit from my work, or none at all, that is not a concern of mine, I move on to clean the next room.

@namark I have no idea what (if any) point you're trying to make here…

@phryk I happy to clarify any specific part. Absolutely nothing to latch on to in the entire paragraph for you?

I'm not challenging your assertion but the quoted justification of it, which I consider "weak".

@namark Honestly, the more I read it the less sense it makes to me.

I'm not even sure what you're referencing with "it" – Kropotkins paragraph or my assertion about free and open technology?

@namark Also where the hell does the thing about patents come from? Neither Kropotkin nor I argued for patents but against them…

@phryk Yes, as I said I agree with the assertion but the quoted justification is weak. It says that thousands were neglected, so an easy rebuttal is "well we will not neglect them anymore and that is why we need patent law".

Regarding the it.
> It's a "whoops...
It = quote, or what it boils down to as it does not challenge the concept IP, and in a way supports it (regardless of the good intentions).
> It is not thousands of inventors...
it = the justification of the assertion (which I agree with)

Any further it refers to things within the paragraph itself, not anything external and seem more or less clear.

@namark The *whole thing* is very explicitly against any sort of IP – It's not about those people being neglected (though they were) but about the inherent impossibility of owning an idea because it by necessity depends on ideas had and refined by uncountable generations of people in the past.

@namark For example my "invention", a secure nojs webframework with datavis and -analysis depends on Flask, peewee, pandas, geojson, python, C, HTTP, HTML, SVG, TCP, Ethernet, microprocessors, transistors, electricity, …

I could literally spend days and weeks just writing a list of all the things that were needed to be in place for me to pull this off – the point is that ultimately, I can't "own" this invention by me any more than I can own HTTP or particle charges.

@phryk according IP laws you can (for a certain amount of time) own it. Past is past, mistakes can't be undone, the laws are concerned about the present and the future. Thousands is very countable by modern day standards. npm could charge a small amount from you (or anyone who ever used any library/framework) and distribute it according to IP owners. It could also check a list of entities allowed or denied to copy the work, maintained by the copyright holders of each project - a list that can be as specific as they want to exclude all sorts of evil nazis of course. You are simply saying we are not registering and enforcing IP effectively enough (or can not do it at all), to which an answer is "ok we will try to do better, would you attach your credit card to npm please? no? well we gotta make it a law then". After all no law is perfectly enforced. There are murderers who walk free and innocents who are convicted. Does it mean we should cancel criminal law?

@namark Uh, you're aware that you're arguing with an anarchist? OF FUCKING COURSE WE SHOULD CANCEL CRIMINAL LAW. :D

@phryk I'm pretending to be a lawyer, some government official or general public you are trying to convince. Your whole justification is "IP is right, but we can't enforce or keep track of it", that's why I'm talking about what IP is and what it considers right. I can rephrase:

Yarr, fella! Sum evil killer peeps are terrorizing the villages and nobody can stops em. Does this mean killing is good?