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Comment by lost_tourist | Hacker News Reader

Human nature. We haven't changed that much in the past 50k years or so. Some people are very altruistic and giving, others not so much. An artist might club you over the head for stealing his techniques and ideas and copying them into a new portion of the cave or rock wall, others would have taught you and approved of your work.

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> An artist might club you over the head for stealing his techniques and ideas and copying them into a new portion of the cave or rock wall, others would have taught you and approved of your work.

Exactly. Same back then as today.

An insecure cave person would be protective of their cave painting turf. A well-adjusted cave person (also likely more talented) would be sharing ideas and resources or have other work for/with them.

Are you at all familiar with the historiographical fallacy of presentism?

I'm not so sure about that. If I listen to old blues artists from the 20s-60s then everyone seemed to be copying everything from everyone else.

Do you get angry if someone "steals" your programming techniques and ideas, and copies them into a new portion of the codebase?

I think all of this is very cultural.

thats not the case. almost all human works ever was not even attributed to the author. Nobody considered copyright when they recited Homer or published reprinted manuals until 1700

the concept is very new

> Nobody considered copyright when they recited Homer

Really? Curious that we know the author's name then… seems like… attribution?

Correct, many literary works had famous authors but attribution has nothing to do with copy-rights. None of the authors of written texts, from greek tragedies, roman poets up to reprinted books had exclusive commercial rights to their writings, until the 16th cen.

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