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Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

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Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#71

Post by jp57 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #65
jp57 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you do covers, and everyone knows the difference between a cover and an original. Even so, bands that do original music often try to do the cover in their own style, so the question of "how is this different from the original" is still relevant.

> Sure, you do covers, and everyone knows the difference between a cover and an original. Everyone? You'd be amazed at the number of songs people think are the originals but are actually covers. I bet there's some songs even you didn't realise were covers > Even so, bands that do original music often try to do the cover in their own style "often" is a pretty telling term here because it's also often when the cover is…

> Sure, you do covers, and everyone knows the difference between a cover and an original.

Everyone? You'd be amazed at the number of songs people think are the originals but are actually covers. I bet there's some songs even you didn't realise were covers

Geez. I meant the concept of a cover vs the concept of an original. A cover is ultimately a performance, and is different from writing a new song. This is so well understood within the music community that a song even has separate copyrights for the song itself and a recording of its performance (even by the songwriter).

A baked pie is analogous to a performance of a recipe, while the recipe itself is analogous to the song (as a concept).

But it is strange to think of a reimplementation of a piece of software that one might acquire and use easily; it doesn't really fit the concept of performance. I am in fact a fan of reimplementing things in order to figure out how they work, but I don't expect my implementation to have any utility beyond the pedagogical value I got from doing it, unless it is in some way different from what exists already. I'm not sure what value I'd get from showing it to someone or what they'd get from looking at it, exactly.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#72

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jihiggins wrote: post #26
drewcoo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Wait, how is this different from every other peach pie recipe that's ever been written? It seems really similar to another recipe I have." > That's not an unreasonable answer. Pies are not supposed to be unique. Recipes are freely traded. That "friend" is an a-hole.

imo, only if it's asked in bad faith. maybe that's just worded poorly, but e.g. "oh, thanks! what'd you do differently with this recipe?" or w/e

If I took the time to develop, write down and share a recipe, I'd welcome that question. Even if it's not original, there is variation among peach pies and I clearly have an opinion on it.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#73

Post by sqeaky »

krisoft wrote: post #24
apeescape wrote: post #14

I mean, recreational programming and creating a side project for fun is nice and all, but a peach pie is something you can consume and is thus of interest to anyone who likes peach pies, whereas software that does nothing differently or better than the existing (well-known) solutions is just, well, not interesting to anybody else than the person who wrote it. Kudos to you for writing a generic TODO app, but why shoul…

> software that does nothing differently or better than the existing (well-known) solutions is just, well, not interesting to anybody else than the person who wrote it. There can be many reasons. The practical availability or licensing of the work is the most common one. It is great that google has an amazing implementation of whatever state of the art algorithm. It is not much use to anybody else if they can't read…

I would argue that being the first open source variant of a common commercial product is an interesting differentiator. But if there's already an open source version just being another open source one isn't interesting. This is exactly the kind of difference that we're talking about that make something not "just another".

And if someone's doing a thing to learn then why is it being shared, how does that change how it's interesting to other people? I often argue such things should be put in portfolios to show off skills, but that doesn't really make it interesting beyond the scope of evaluating someone's skill. This kind of academic or portfolio work is also clearly not what we're discussing because of course it has inherent value in just the creation.

If you make it to do app and share it with me, I really don't care. Unless you're trying to show me that you can use language XYZ with tool set ABC and your to-do app does that. But even then I don't care about the to do with I care about your skills.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#74

Post by [deleted] »

mistercow wrote: post #30
drewcoo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Wait, how is this different from every other peach pie recipe that's ever been written? It seems really similar to another recipe I have." > That's not an unreasonable answer. Pies are not supposed to be unique. Recipes are freely traded. That "friend" is an a-hole.

Also the analogy just really breaks at the seam we’re examining because a reasonable and obvious answer would be “I like the pies you get from this one”, which isn’t a great answer if you’re talking about software. And recipes are a lot simpler than software, so your friend could just look at the two recipes and quickly see how they’re different.

[deleted]

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#75

Post by sqeaky »

yimmothathird wrote: post #33
Rodmine wrote: post #31

Better title would be: Don't show your pie to losers on a website; feed it to the hungry.

[flagged]

Normally to determine if someone is not cruel and worth being near in general I invite them to a nice restaurant. Then I let them handle most of the interactions with the wait staff. If they are rude or jerks to people they have authority over I stop interacting with them. Thank you for saving me the price of a meal with having to vet you.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#76

Post by asah »

??? is this a troll post?

A pie is a physical object which enjoys a barrier to competition by being geographically near the consumer - other pies are not near your mouth.

A pie degrades quickly over time - last month's pie is not a competitor to today's pie.

A pie is destroyed during consumption - the pie your friend ate cannot be then eaten by you, no matter how delicious they say it was.

Software (and especially web/mobile/SaaS) is nothing like pies - your friend eats a delicious piece of software, telecommunicates this to you halfway around the world and you can put down the pie you were eating and instantly eat the same pie as your friend, then tell more friends. Pretty soon, nobody's eating the previous pies.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#77

Post by strangattractor »

jp57 wrote: post #22

As others have mentioned, a pie is consumable, and thus a good one has value even if it isn't original. But a slight change to the original scenario makes asking about originality much more reasonable: Imagine you write a peach pie recipe over the weekend, and you give a copy of the recipe to your friend. They respond: "Wait, how is this different from every other peach pie recipe that's ever been written? It seems r…

When a User adopts a new piece of software an investment of time and effort is necessary (not so for eating a pie). If a particular piece of software doesn't do anything to improve the User's current process it is a wasted investment. If the User currently doesn't use a similar piece of software because they found what is available lacking then why invest if the new software doesn't do anything different.

Asking how a product is different is always relevant when allocation of your own resources is involved.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#78

Post by hnlmorg »

jp57 wrote: post #71
hnlmorg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, you do covers, and everyone knows the difference between a cover and an original. Everyone? You'd be amazed at the number of songs people think are the originals but are actually covers. I bet there's some songs even you didn't realise were covers > Even so, bands that do original music often try to do the cover in their own style "often" is a pretty telling term here because it's also often when the cover is…

> Sure, you do covers, and everyone knows the difference between a cover and an original. Everyone? You'd be amazed at the number of songs people think are the originals but are actually covers. I bet there's some songs even you didn't realise were covers Geez. I meant the concept of a cover vs the concept of an original. A cover is ultimately a performance, and is different from writing a new song. This is so well u…

> Geez. I meant the concept of a cover vs the concept of an original. A cover is ultimately a performance, and is different from writing a new song. This is so well understood within the music community that a song even has separate copyrights for the song itself and a recording of its performance (even by the songwriter).

If only it were that simple. There are constantly cases bought to court about similarities in one persons work to another artists. Then you have other issues around what constitutes a derivative work. And so many original songs sample other artists songs and pay them royalties, that's not a cover either.

I think what you're trying to highlight is writing credits vs performance. Which is a lot easier to define. However even here, plenty of disputes still happen.

> But it is strange to think of a reimplementation of a piece of software that one might acquire and use easily; it doesn't really fit the concept of performance.

The real problem with these analogies is that you're comparing something consumable with something reuable. But I accept the point of an analogy isn't precision.

> I am in fact a fan of reimplementing things in order to figure out how they work, but I don't expect my implementation to have any utility beyond the pedagogical value I got from doing it, unless it is in some way different from what exists already.

Would emulation fall into this category? You're building software to run something exactly as it would run elsewhere - a reimplementation. The motive differs (to run on different hardware) but that's not a property of the product itself.

Which comes back to my earlier post: you're talking about the merit of replication without discussing motives behind it. In your latest comment you say "to figure out how they work" and that's another great example of a motive that brings value to replication.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#79

Post by albedoa »

hnlmorg wrote: post #78
jp57 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, you do covers, and everyone knows the difference between a cover and an original. Everyone? You'd be amazed at the number of songs people think are the originals but are actually covers. I bet there's some songs even you didn't realise were covers Geez. I meant the concept of a cover vs the concept of an original. A cover is ultimately a performance, and is different from writing a new song. This is so well u…

> Geez. I meant the concept of a cover vs the concept of an original. A cover is ultimately a performance, and is different from writing a new song. This is so well understood within the music community that a song even has separate copyrights for the song itself and a recording of its performance (even by the songwriter). If only it were that simple. There are constantly cases bought to court about similarities in o…

> If only it were that simple. There are constantly cases bought to court about similarities in one persons work to another artists. Then you have other issues around what constitutes a derivative work. And so many original songs sample other artists songs and pay them royalties, that's not a cover either.

It's increasingly difficult to accept that you are replying to jp57 in good faith. They are not talking about the ability of anyone to recognize the difference between an original and a derived work. The concept of a cover is well-understood.

Re: Pie doesn't need to be original unless you claim it so

#80

Post by Pet_Ant »

apeescape wrote: post #14

I mean, recreational programming and creating a side project for fun is nice and all, but a peach pie is something you can consume and is thus of interest to anyone who likes peach pies, whereas software that does nothing differently or better than the existing (well-known) solutions is just, well, not interesting to anybody else than the person who wrote it. Kudos to you for writing a generic TODO app, but why shoul…

I mean if you wrote it purely in assembler, or pacman inside of Excel, or in a fun and interesting way. Purely functional, provably correct. There are lots of reasons to share it with others.
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