The "intellectual property" misnomer

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

Ben Finney <bignose-hates-spam at and-zip-does-too.com.au> wrote previously:
|The term he used doesn't explain anything, and only confuses.  It would
|have been *less* confusing to say "The PSF holds something unspecified
|for Python".  At least there is no pretence of explanation there.

This is flatly disingenuous.

There is not one reader of c.l.py in a hundred who does not know that IP
consists of copyrights, trademarks, patents, and--to an extent--trade
secrets.  Yes, those things are different from each other, but that's
what the category includes.

There is no more ambiguity in the phrase "intellectual property" than
there is in the phrase "African countries" or "scripting languages".
Both of those latter phrases include a number of things that differ
significantly between each other; and both even have some borderline
cases.  But I'm not going to stop using any of the terms, nor should
Guido.

Just because you think (correctly) that IP is *bad*, it doesn't mean the
term doesn't denote.

...

Then some more bluster and whatnot:  PSF has copyrights; hopefully
Python is not patent-restricted, but who knows; it's hard for an open
source project to have any trade secrets; I don't think the name
"Python" is trademarked, but were it to be, the PSF should hold the
trademark.  Duh!

Yours, Lulu...

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