I'm surprised at some people's attitude about this.
There appears to be no question as to the fact that artwork is recognized as belonging to one individual. I never heard of anyone in Europe or anywhere else for that matter giving respect or credence to art developed in committee. Art is Art because it is by essence an individual project. A Van Gogh is unique. As is Picasso. As is DaVinci. A similar view of Music and its works exist. The Clash is not the Beatles is not Beethoven, etc. Each artistic group and achievement demands and deserves unique recognition for it's accomplishments.
Software, is one more category of recognized talent and achievement. Whether it is of a cooperative corporate nature or strictly small business, respecting and acknowledge the efforts of prior work is only appropriate. If one is however going to use, apply, borrow or outright steal work of others and put that into so called Free Software that is not what either GPL or any self-respecting programmer should be doing in the first place. If a company or any author of any work chooses not to participate in the GPL or Open Source environment that is a choice to be respected. In consideration of the nature of Open Source and the spirit of the GPL some companies expand the manner in which they participate in how they both protect their patents and work and yet allow a certain amount of recognized parameters of leeway. Apple has done this with Darwin for example and defined a kind of unique Open Source in which it feels it can cooperate with. Some companies do similarly; others are entirely hostile to any such concept.
Corporate individuals as such and by definition all individual inventors have the right to choose how they will behave and approach the Open Source issue and the opportunity and challenge it represents. What benefits no one however is a retention of communistic values that confuse a willingness to share with outright theft to some right of the public or masses of peoples. The public as such benefits when individuals are safe and can share what they choose to share or NOT, in respectful recognition. This is as old as a children's ball game. The bat and ball played with belong to someone or some group although a community of people are playing with the items; there is no question at the end of the game to return the items to the owners or is there? Depending on how one answers that question determines all other relationships... there is a great deal of difference between recognition and appreciation and outright disrespect of original effort. What kind of people we are and whom we wish to be reflects how we choose to address this issue, and all others like it.
On Mar 27, 2005, at 9:16 PM, Andrew wrote:
Just log on their website... I am ashamed. It deeply hurts my feelings.
Kiss you freedom goodbye, friends.
What's next?
http://www.mplayerhq.com/
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