Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : David Golden
Date : Fri Sep 16 2005 10:23 pm

Chris Sonnack wrote:

> If I have created the beer and am selling it to feed my family and you
> copy it rather than buy it, you are *stealing* from me.  You are
> actively taking food from my family.

You haven't stolen from me if I make a sweater to sell to "feed my
starving family" and you don't buy it, or even if you knit your own - 
I had no right to expect you or anyone to buy the sweater, and I'm just
doing a crap job of feeding my family.

Absence of expected profit is not loss.

If you spend your time making copyable beer in a world where beer can be
freely copied, you have no right to expect others to refrain from
copying it just so that you can make a profit selling copies of beer to
people who could quench their thirst with a beer without involving you.

You could, however, charge for the service of new beer information
pattern creation and disclosure - work valuable to others still lies
in those services.

Were those bastards using the printing presses stealing food
from the families of scribes?  No.  Scribes who failed to adapt
were just being monumentally stupid.

.