On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, Luchezar Georgiev wrote: > Quite the contrary, corporations steal our money when they ask us to buy > their software. Microsoft stole everything they released. The criminals > are they, not we. There is no fair (honest) way to become a millionnaire > or a billionaire. And because we're not millionaires or billionaires, > we're not criminals.
A big issue is that limited illegal software copying actually helps Microsoft. Since so many people illegally copy MS Office for use at home they get used to it and then the place they work will buy a proper license. Instead of buying it or using an open source product such as open office. This is why Microsoft isn't doing much against it in, say China, because they know that eventually people will depend on their software so they can cash in at a later moment. In this case, instead of pursuing a technical solution (Open Watcom is open source so can be changed) to reach a certain goal, you suggest I go for an illegal black-box solution, the cowards' way out. By ignoring Borland's copyright you indirectly hurt the OW project because the other means to reach your goal would be to modify it. In the long run we're much better off depending on open source tools than unsupported binary-only tools (supported binary-only is OK with me). Whether 'free beer' or not is irrelevant here; Turbo C++ 1.01 is just as much a black box with bugs that will never be fixed as Borland C 4.52. This is why I was so happy with the announcement that Watcom would be open sourced and contributed myself; I've always found the museum compilers suboptimal and this also avoided the *really* hard task to teach GCC about 16-bit code and far pointers or to teach bcc (Bruce's C compiler, www.cix.co.uk/~mayday/) about far pointers. > Good programmers who really deserve money, like you or Joergen Ibsen, get > it even from people like me. I registered my copy of aPack! Would I > register it if it it was made by a corporation like Borland? Never! > They're too rich anyway! Borland made pretty good value products in the days when DOS was still mainstream -- even many home users bought it since the price was worth the books in the package alone. > Copyright is dying, long life copyleft! ;-) copyleft just being a special breed of copyrighted works (i.e. copyrighted software where you are allowed to modify and redistribute the source code, as long as you don't put up any additional restrictions). Michael Devore's Causeway is neither copyrighted nor copylefted for instance. *BSD is copyrighted but not copylefted. Same for X11. I don't see these going away any time soon. Bart ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by Shop4tech.com-Lowest price on Blank Media 100pk Sonic DVD-R 4x for only $29 -100pk Sonic DVD+R for only $33 Save 50% off Retail on Ink & Toner - Free Shipping and Free Gift. http://www.shop4tech.com/z/Inkjet_Cartridges/9_108_r285 _______________________________________________ Freedos-kernel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-kernel
