> They would all agree to put the code in the public domain, and they would all just, you know, basically make money by selling scanners. That was the idea. It

> They would all agree to put the code in the public domain, and they would all just, you know, basically make money by selling scanners. That was the idea. It's no different than giving away the razors to create demand for, and selling, the blades. Which is necessary in this case with intellectual property in order to overcome the chicken-and-egg problem of competing, non-interoperable standards that don't gain significant market share, no one uses, and thus no one makes money on. A code that can't be read by the scanner you have and a scanner that can't read a code you have is useless. Calling this Marxist makes little sense and reads like the author has an agenda. The following bit that referred to an "Elon Musk of barcodes" and inventors getting notoriety is pretty uniformed too.