> People wonder how programmers could make a living in an environment
> where most software was open source and anyone could write their own
> code. Lawyers don't seem to be starving even though case law is open
> source and anyone is entitled to defend themselves.
The difference is that case law is the input to the work that lawyers do for
a particular client, whereas source code is the output of the work that
programmers do.
If you have the case law, you still need the lawyer to do the work for you.
But if you have the source code, you no longer need to pay a programmer to
do the work for you, or to pay the particular programmer who did the
original work.
Of course, case law is also the collective output of the court cases that
lawyers work on, as well as being the input to particular cases.
Regards, Tony Healy
--------
Fighter pilots hated to declare an emergency, because it triggered a complex
and very public set of events back at the field. This reluctance would drive
flight controllers crazy. They would see a ship beginning to drift off the
radar, and know the pilot was probably struggling with engine failure at low
altitude. "Longstick, do you want to declare an emergency?" This would rouse
him. "Negative, Longstick is not declaring an emergency." Kaboom. Adapted
from Tom Wolfe: The Right Stuff
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