Just a few holes in the Permaculture suit?

["Neil Barraclough" <neilb@vic.australis.com.au>]

Robert Jensen said-

> This whole debate turns on two issues:
> 1.   The need to respect an authors work, and
> 2.   The propogation of a brilliant set of ideas.

Perhaps there is more to it and if so I would like to thank Georg Parlow
for raising the 
following-

> i believe one major emotional reason for the concerns is this:

> care of the earth
> care of people
> sharing of the surplus
> 
> this is the core of permaculture, as daddy bill stated and we all agree.
now
> his recent trademark attempt does not on first glance fit in with this -
> this is reason for concern.
> 
> georg

Many of the emails to the two newsgroups have, I believe, given reasons to
support 
Georg's concern.  If the human values needed for the ethic of "care for the
people" 
don't predominate over a desire to profit within our founders, what has the
consequences 
for the  cause overall been?

The debate has concentrated on the consequences of Trade Marking on
teaching 
Permaculture, an area of financial profit for many involved in PC.  Why has
the debate 
concentrated on the area of profit if there is a flaw in the ethic?



>  From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>
>  Subject: Re: permaculture trademark alert
> It took a couple more rounds of letters and some escalation of rhetoric

>(my behavior was called "improper") for me to realize that by "material
> derived from" Bill's work, they didn't mean places where I had copied his
words
>(because I hadn't done that) but places where I had referred to anything
>mentioned in Bill's books.
 
>Lisa and Bill sent a list showing that they wanted me to remove all
reference to 
>guilds, keyhole beds, mandala gardens, certain aspects of patterning, herb 
>spirals, Zone and Sector, and a host of other concepts basic to
permaculture.

If these concepts are basic to permaculture then perhaps we can  find out
how far 
Permaculture has come in the last 20 or so years.  Could someone tell me 
to what extent has the use of Mandala Gardens, Keyhole Gardens and Herb
Spirals
contributed to the home gardeners food production in Australia?

Have hey proved to be excellent concepts for selling books and courses and
if so is
this what we are deciding upon?

Neil Barraclough