The "intellectual property" misnomer

[Ben Finney]

On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 15:13:43 -0400, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> The PSF holds the intellectual property rights for Python

Ugh.  Please don't propagate this ridiculous, meaningless term.  It's
used to refer to a wide range of greatly disparate legal concepts; to
use it as a single term implies that there's some unifying "intellectual
property" principle joining them together, which is a falsehood.

If the PSF holds the copyright to Python, please say that.

If the PSF holds patents which cover Python, please say that.

If the PSF owns the trademark for Python, please say that.

If the PSF has trade secrets in Python, please say that.

But please *don't* muddy the water by saying the PSF holds "the
intellectual property rights" for Python.  That says nothing useful --
it doesn't help determine which of the above fields of law are
applicable -- and only promotes the idea that all these different fields
of law are part of a whole, which they are definitely not.

It also encourages another falsehood: that of considering intellectual
objects as property.  This is something which many people who use Python
would disagree with strongly.

    <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#IntellectualProperty>

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