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On Sunday 10 October 2004 7:10 pm, Dave Trudgian wrote:
There is no justification for hiding source code - read that again: NONE. All source code is for sharing.I also disagree on this. Why? Because it's the way the world works (be that good or evil). I have been paid for writing code that will not be seen by the public.
Being paid to write code does not mean the code has to be hidden. e.g. Novell, RedHat, Mandrake.
I could not have been paid to write that code as open source.
Simply untrue. Lots of people are paid to produce free software.
Yeah, if things changed enormously it would be possible.
That change has already happened. Payment for support is an accepted method of paying for developers, it works. Donations and sponsorship also work, e.g. Debian.
I'm not prepared, nor are enough people, to go through the economic pain that would be a precursor to economic viability of sharing all code.
Also untrue. You are falling for the lies of the proprietary software houses. I can loan you 'Free Software for a Free Society' if you like, it comprehensively demolishes all your arguments against sharing ALL code. However, you can always read the contents direct from the FSF site if you prefer. I bought the book to make a contribution to the FSF and GNU Press, not because I couldn't read the content any other way.
To me the fact that people can earn a living by not sharing their code is justificiation enough for not sharing it.
?? So because people pay to talk you are now going to charge those who listen to you???
This does not mean that I do not applaud those who share, and those who help people who share to make a living.
1. Code is speech, it is not owned or the property of anyone. 2. It costs nothing to duplicate code so there is no justification in charging for copies. 3. Economic loss only occurs if those who have the software would otherwise have paid for it rather than solving the problem another way. Copying harms no-one because most people would not have paid for it. 4. Authors have no special connection with their programs, beyond the requirements of copyright that their contribution be acknowledged. Is the author more important than anyone else? The public have rights too and the law is clearly on the side of the public: 5. Copyright is there to protect the PUBLIC, not the author - it says that copyright MUST be temporary. The purpose, in law, of copyright is to promote progress and understanding, NOT to protect authors. Believing that authors have any natural rights over their creation is to twist the law beyond breaking point. 6. The quality of the software is not dependent on the amount of funding. http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/why-free.html Software is NOT a physical object and cannot be compared using mechanisms that are based on trade or materials. When you eat a sandwich, no-one else is able to re-eat it - it's gone. If someone else eats your sandwich, that hurts you directly - to the same extent as it benefits the other person. When I change a program, anyone is free to use either version. If you copy that program to someone else, it doesn't affect me in the slightest. If you take a copy of that program, it remains available for more copies - it is not changed by the act of copying, nor reduced. "As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright. But underground, closet cooperation does not make for a good society. A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying ``No'' to proprietary software. You deserve to be able to cooperate openly and freely with other people who use software. You deserve to be able to learn how the software works, and to teach your students with it. You deserve to be able to hire your favourite programmer to fix it when it breaks. You deserve free software." http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/why-free.html -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.codehelp.co.uk/ http://www.dclug.org.uk/ http://www.isbn.org.uk/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/ http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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