Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again) To : comp.programming From : Joe Wright Date : Tue Aug 30 2005 07:08 pm Richard Heathfield wrote: > Chris Sonnack said: > > >>One of them is the perception free==crap. The folks from whom >>I bought my last dog (RIP ) were originally giving away >>the pups. No one (pardon the pun) bit. Raised the price to >>25USD and they (here I go again) ran away. >> >>Price is one thing. FREE is another. > > > Absolutely right - that perception has always been a good rule of thumb for > people in the past, so why should they change now? Having said that, > software breaks a lot of perceptions, and this is clearly one that it > shatters. > > >>Seems to me the only ones pushing this agenda are those with a >>direct, and IMO rather selfish, perceived benefit. *I* want to >>modify my software. *I* want to get free source code. > > > I like to share my stuff with other people if I can. I think it's cool that > some other people want to share too. Not everyone wants to share, and I can > understand that. After all, there's stuff on my dev box that I /don't/ want > to share, too. > > The important thing, I think, is this - that it should be the author (or, if > you prefer, the owner) of the software who decides whether it's "for share" > - NOT the consumer. That is, we should respect intellectual property > rights, not just to the letter, but also in spirit, so to speak. > > I think Borland has it just right. They've shared some of their stuff, > because they're nice people - but nice people don't have to share /all/ > their stuff, so for their other stuff, the stuff they sell, they say "look, > treat it like a book - Joe can use your copy, sure, but while he's using > it, you shouldn't be able to use it at the same time, okay?" and I think > that's a good balance. > > Microsoft's licence agreements are written in such scary language that they > always make me wary of installing the software. So I don't. :-) > I'm not sure that Microsoft really 'means' it. They've been shouting about piracy for 20 years but have done literally nothing to stop it. None of MSDOS, Windows 3.11, Windows 95 or Windows 98 have ever been even copy protected. On purpose in my view. For this reason. Microsoft doesn't need everybody to pay for their product, they simply want everybody to use it. If they can sell it to 50 percent and let another 40 percent steal it, that only leaves 10 percent of the market to the competition. It's not about money, it's about market share. -- Joe Wright "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." --- Albert Einstein --- .