On Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 09:35:09PM -0700, Chris Alvarez wrote: > While I love, develop and promote OSS, I do not like the whole > concept of > if-you-put-a-copyright-on-it-you-are-taking-away-my-freedom. I don't > like it when they make it look like it is immoral to sell non-custom > software. I think that enforcing ideas like those of Richard > Stallman actually take away my economic freedom to start > enterprenuerships in the areas of software development.
Let's be clear on exactly what you are doing when you put a (C) on something you derive (I subscribe to Hume's philosophy whereby everything you are is defined by cultural influences in your environment as it interacts with your brain, and hence everything you think and everything you create is a derivative work). You are, in essence, saying, ``I am appealing to the government to hold a gun to your head and force you to behave a certain way with respect to this derivative work that I have instantiated in this or that form.'' I don't care if you are Microsoft or RMS; this is what you are doing. You are dictating terms and conditions whereby someone may behave with respect to your derivative work, on penalty of financial ruin or prison time as imposed upon you by the government. To copy is a fundamental right inherited by all men. We are all copying machines. Our very physical forms are the result of copying genetic sequences. Our language is copied from our parents. Our religion is copied in a like manner. Everything we think is interpreted in the context of a culture that was copied into our brains. To place restrictions or conditions on this act of copying is to control that primitive component of our very existence. I'm going to withhold my own opinions about the morality of placing these controls on copying bahavior, but I just felt it important to put this part of the debate into perspective. Mike .___________________________________________________________________. "The image of life is, 'Something that eats itself.'" - Joseph Campbell
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