Nick Rout wrote: > this is where it gets difficult for me, are you also saying that an
author of a book should not get royalties of be able to have copyright
protection? where is the difference?
The copyright laws (at least the original ones) were designed for authors of paper books.
Where the major problems occur is that they were designed to control who could make money from an original work. In those days the only way of publishing something was to create a paper copy of it. This means a physical object was required. Physical objects are a heck of a lot easier to control than ideas.
However AFAIK there was no restrictions on how the information in those books was used (except by the church :-/ ).
What I'm saying is that copyright law *fits* with authors and books. It does not fit with programs and musical recordings.
A program is not only information it has a functional component. The reason that someone would write some software should not be because they can flog copies of it but because they need whatever the software can do.
<OT>
And musicians should make money from concerts not from flogging copies of recordings
</OT>
people train to become programmers, and some become good at it. they write software. why shouldn't they sell it if they want to? i don't see how it can be immoral, as long as people have an effective choice about whether to use it.
A programmer almost *never* creates any software from scratch. They use libraries and concepts that other people have created and made available for them to use. They write using others operating systems etc
*they stand on the shoulders of giants*
For them to then remove any rights of others to use their contribution is not only stingy and "dog in the manger" but IMO theft from the same community of developers that made their software possible in the first place.
choice about whether to use it probably means that it should stick to some standard, like an rfc or whatever, or publish its api.
That is another argument entirely
-- Zane Gilmore, Analyst / Programmer Information Services Section, Information Technology Dept, University of Canterbury - Te Whare Waananga o Waitaha Private Bag 4800, Christchurch New Zealand Phone +64-3-364 2987 extn 7895
