> Again, many of you are thinking in terms of what is "good for
> society". I agree that some limitations to ensure the good for society
> should exist (like action against monopoly and things like that), but
> I am talking about personal rights. I think the artist has a right to
> put the conditions he wants in his music (that are not illegal, of
> course) or software or whatever. <extreme example>If I want to charge
> $1,000,000 for my new graphic software and put an end-user agreement
> that says that you can only use it once and then you have to uninstall
> it from your machine, I think that is OK.</extreme example> Then is
> where the laws of supply and demand come into play. I can not prevent
> you from making a similar product and selling it for less, letting
> people use it as much as they want or making it OSS. That of course
> would destroy my business but it was fair game. I think that all the

Unless you have patented the item, thus preventing others from
independently developing the same type of thing....  

I despise patents because they prevent this type of situation from
playing out.  A patent says "I created this, and so even if you create
it separately, you still can't use/sell/distribute it without paying
me".  So, in that situation, if you create your new graphics software,
and someone needs to use certain features that the graphics software
provides, even if they (or people they know) are amazing programmers,
and they know exactly how to write that feature themselves (without you,
or anyone that has helped you), if you have patented it, then they are
forced to live under your abusive licensing simply because they are not
allowed to create it themselves and use (or distribute) it.  In this
situation, your entire case falls to pieces, and we see that patents are
extremely destructive to society

(yes, i know that you are talking about copyrights and not patents, but
i think that you've been ignoring that a lot of people on the list have
been trying to say that 
A) even RMS believes in the right to copyright,
B) neither RMS nor those of us in this discussion are planning on making
proprietary software, copyrights or non-free licenses illegal or
non-existant, 
C) the thing that concerns us is the people who are trying to force
*everyone* to use proprietary licenses and remove the possibility of
using free licenses.)


-- 
Erin Sharmahd           [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CS Student              Unix Users Group
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