Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again) To : comp.programming From : Chris Sonnack Date : Tue Sep 20 2005 10:19 pm David Golden writes: >> If I have created the beer and am selling it to feed my family and >> copy it rather than buy it, you are *stealing* from me. You are >> you 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 - True, but unresponsive to the point. Which, again, is that if you make a profit by stealing my work, you are a thief. Period. > Absence of expected profit is not loss. Can you back that up in any logical fashion? (Also, try to keep your mind on the ball -- *profit* need not be involved in this.) If I have a reasonable expectation of gains from a marketing strategy based on analysis of fair competition, resources, etc, and you come along and steal from me so as to prohibit those gains, it is not only a loss,... I have the right to come looking for you with blood in my eye. > 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.... This is total nonsense. I have *exactly* the same right to expect moral people to refrain from entering my unlocked house as I do to expect moral people to refrain from stealing from me. Which is to say, in a moral and free society, plenty. Do you really want to go with a moral position that equates the ease of theft with its morality? > Were those bastards using the printing presses stealing food > from the families of scribes? In so far as they were not directly stealing the scribes work and benefiting from it, of course not. -- |_ CJSonnack _____________| How's my programming? | |_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL | |_____________________________________________|_______________________| .