>From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work. Now with an example, Suppose if a person writes in his B.Tech, M.Tech or his PhD thesis something and claims that it is his original work, but which has already been published by another person, then it becomes Plagiarism. On the other hand, if the person is building something on top of what another person has done, it is not Plagiarism, but it is his contribution. I think that tells you what is plagiarism. And now in Free Software, I am not saying that it is just my own code, it has my contribution also. Linus Torvalds wrote the basic code for Linux Kernel, Richard Stallman wrote basic code for emacs, and then people started liking it and started contributing to it, and thus Emacs, Linux Kernel and everything is a collective effort. And thus it is an 'evolutionary' process (not sure if the usage is correct). How does science progress, Albert Einstein came up several theories, and people take that as the basis and work on another problem and try to solve it, and so on. Now on the other hand, I am telling you that I have made this awesome software and I can share the binary, but not the source code, you are restricting the usage of that software, as you are the sole owner of the software and thus nobody can build something on top of your software, thus your software will always have the limited set of features you originally designed it to have, and will always have the limited set of features until you decide revise it. Proprietary! Now which one is beneficial to the society, with restrictions or without restrictions, freedom or limitation, copyright or copyleft, free knowledge or proprietary knowledge? -- Anoop Jacob Thomas http://anoop.caremedia.org -- "Freedom is the only law". "Freedom Unplugged" http://www.ilug-tvm.org You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ilug-tvm" group. To control your subscription visit http://groups.google.co.in/group/ilug-tvm/subscribe To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For details visit the google group page: http://groups.google.com/group/ilug-tvm?hl=en
