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Comment by sdfjkl | Hacker News Reader

I bought some tomatoes at the supermarket. I ate some of them and decided they were really tasty. I squeezed the squishy stuff from some of them into a bowl and fermented it to get the seeds out of their growth-inhibiting sacks. I planted these and now I have tasty tomatoes growing on my windowsill.

If anyone thinks they have any rights to these seeds that I paid for (as part of the tomatoes), they're wrong on several levels, and if there is legislation that says they're not wrong, that legislation is in dire need of repair.

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Certainly so in many cases, but it's not difficult to imagine strains for mass consumption hobbled by proprietary sequences that cause the plants to wither without a certain additive or activate some kind of DNA-destruction process if not crossbred with another secret strain.

It's sad to think so, but it may be a wise course to consider the freedom to grow a tomato you found at the supermarket a temporary privilege while the ones who grew it find ways of taking it away and cementing their advantage. Imagine 15 years ago saying "I can take this game and install it on my computer, my kid's computer, and my laptop" or "I'll lend this copy of a movie to a friend." These processes, once simple and impossible to interrupt, are now often carried out only with permission. Other examples, of course, abound.

Open source seeds may be an idea before its time, but should its time arrive, we'll be glad to have nurtured it early!

"Seeding pirated material" will have a whole new meaning.

You don't really even need legislation. Most produce you buy from the supermarket are from F1 Hybrids [1] which if you plant the seeds are highly variant and lack vigor (i'm not sure of the % of tomatoes in supermarkets are F1s specifically though). This is one natural way things like this have not come to reality and one way most seed producers (especially ones focused on commercial use) use to protect their varieties.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_hybrid

Agreed. You can't generally won't get the same plant from a commercially produced tomato. Instead you will get all kinds of random stuff. Some of it may produce good tomatoes, some may not.

If you are going to go to the effort of growing a garden it's probably worth spending a buck or two and getting some Heirloom or open pollinated seeds. These will breed true and you can replant the seeds from the fruits and get the same plant as the parent.

We've reached a landmark in society: there's DRM in our tomatoes.

These turned out alright and are just as tasty as their parent generation: http://cl.ly/image/3w1W1L0X2g2m

Well especially in your case, since you grew for personal use and not commercially.

As for commercial use though, I think it's wrong for companies to go after farmers who have had seed unwittingly mixed into their own stock. If no theft can be proven. No law has been broken.

Part of the problem, however, is that you can't do that and get the same variety with some plants on the second generation. (I guess this might different with tomatoes)

>Most commercial vegetable seeds are hybrids, which come with a kind of built-in security lock; if you replant seed from a hybrid, you won't get exactly the same kind of plant.

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