On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 12:18 -0700, Jason Edwards wrote: > For me, closed-source software is morally wrong because it's built on > top of other people's ideas.
Just like making a living writing books is morally wrong because there are only seven stories[1] and photocopiers fundamentally alter the economics of publishing. Just like making a living writing music is morally wrong because it's just a rearrangement of previously discovered musical notes. Just liking licensing your software under the GPL is morally wrong because copyright is morally wrong and the GPL depends on copyright. > You don't have to agree with it, but hopefully you can understand why > many Free Software advocates feel the way they do. Whoa, careful there bucko. You've been drinking too much of the kool-aid, or ignoring too many of the details. It's possible to be opposed to software patents without being opposed to copyright. The act of creating knowledge inherently depends on the discoveries of others. That's what the "shoulders of giants" quote is about. The act of creating physical artifacts is fundamentally different. You're one step away from arguing that I should be forced to work to feed you. It's one thing to argue, now that we know about linked lists we should all be allowed to use them. It's a completely different to argue that because we know how to write linked lists I should have to write them for you. [1] http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~blf10/stories.html /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
