"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." (Howard Aiken) Is this true?

Re:"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your i... by lak on Saturday March 10, 2007 @10:27PM (#3502)

It's certainly true for my startup. I've been advertising my ideas for years, hoping someone else would do all the work, but in desperation I'm now building a company to produce the software I was hoping someone else would make.

Look at Google -- they tried to sell their algorithm so they could stay in school, but no one was interested, so they had to put up or shut up. If a bunch of people already thought your idea was a good idea, it'd effectively be a mature space.

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Re:"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your i... by bootload on Sunday March 11, 2007 @10:46PM (#3669)

'... if a bunch of people already thought your idea was a good idea, it'd effectively be a mature space. ...'

I'd modify that slightly...

'people already thought your idea was a good (MONEY SPINNER) idea , it'd effectively be a mature space. ...'

New ideas maybe easy to come up with but translation into a product is not easy. If you can see a new idea implemented & copy it you piggy back on the innovation of others thinking & implementing.

Compare for instance Flickr to say Zoomer. The later was developed post flickr & probably quicker. The point being Flickr came up with the wonderful clean url design, api design and concepts such as 'favourites'. It also showed there was a market. Zoomer copied lots of Flickr ideas without having to think, tinker & hack.

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