Quote:
Originally Posted by nik-
Profit was always the goal. You're way too naive if you think it wasn't. If it wasn't they wouldn't have started a business, they would have just shared the ideas.
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I'm not so sure that's true. Protecting their ideas is not the same as goals being profit oriented.
I'll use myself as an example. I finished writing my book. I didn't start writing a book with the intention of making money from it. I didn't sit down at my computer every night typing going "yeahhhhh I'm gonna be rich off this crap!" I did it because I wanted to do it. I had an idea and wanted to write it down.
But now that it's finished, you better believe I'm going to protect that in anyway I can while maybe, possibly, pursuing some form of profit off of it. And even that isn't about money, it's about people being interested in reading it. At some point, you have to go through the business side or you end up like Tesla. But it's the business side that it interested in the profit, the creators are interested in recognition. Sometimes you get both, sometimes you get neither. But me bringing my book to Penguin Publishing or something isn't about profit, it's about getting it in as many hands as possible. For Penguin Publishing, it's about profit. They don't care about content or anything, they care if people will buy it, and that's all. And that's why we end up with things like Twilight.
I think the same goes for a lot of people that have innovated or invented something. They did it because they wanted to do it, or wanted to use it themselves, and only after doing it, did the motivation for profit come into play. But IMO, future profits is hardly ever the motivation to create something new. Because things that are new are hardly ever profitable.
And yeah, at the end of the day, if you make something new, and people like it enough to buy it, you want your name on it, rather than selling the idea to someone else. Which is why new companies end up being created vs sharing the tech, as you say.