The point is not necessarily whether someone wants to own the rights to his own ideas, but rather that he doesn't want others to own those same rights.
Larry would probably have been none too happy if $his_employer_at_the_time could have said something like: "Oh well, Larry, that Perl thingy of yours is really cute, we're going to turn it into a product and charge a lot of dollars for it."
It is rather frustrating when you solve a problem and can't make it public since you might get your company's lawyers after you.
Just my 2 cents, -gjb-
