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Well, not
Well, not
Posted May 10, 2008 5:08 UTC (Sat) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)In reply to: Well, not by tzafrir
Parent article: Interview with Neil Young on Music Piracy, MP3 Hell and Finding Freaks on the Web (ReadWriteWeb)
Even RMS doesn't claim that creative works of art (music, books) should be copylefted. With
software, it's a tool and (per RMS) the user should be given access to its internals,
otherwise the user is crippled. With art, there's no reason the creator's wishes on
distribution/modification should not be respected. In fact, the GNU Free Documentation
Licence falls afoul of Debian's guidelines for just that reason ("invariant sections").
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Well, not
Posted May 10, 2008 10:55 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Those invariant section indeed make that license non-free. Again, beyond the availability of freebies that those rich artists were kind enough to release, what did we actually gain here? Will you be able to mix that and use it in a party you throw? Will you be able to use that in your new movie? (probably not, because you put it for download in a page that has adds, and thus it is for-profit even if it freely-downloadable)
Well, not
Posted May 10, 2008 18:49 UTC (Sat) by renox (guest, #23785) [Link]
>With software, it's a tool and (per RMS) the user should be given access to its internals, otherwise the user is crippled. And? What's wrong with that? Sometimes proprietary software providers sell binary-only software or you can also buy the sourcecode and the right to maintain the software. Obviously the second option is more expensive, but I don't see any moral difference between both options.. I've never understood/agreed with this part of RMS speech (closed source software being imoral), if you don't agree with the terms of purchase of something, easy don't buy it!
Well, not
Posted May 10, 2008 19:44 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
If you didn't agree with the purchase of Windows in 1998, you could have chosen not to buy it... by choosing not to buy a computer at all. i.e., your argument is flawed because it assumes that other choices necessarily exist.
Well, not
Posted May 14, 2008 9:10 UTC (Wed) by renox (guest, #23785) [Link]
>If you didn't agree with the purchase of Windows in 1998, you could have chosen not to buy it... by choosing not to buy a computer at all. Not really, you can always build a computer from parts so no Windows installed. The only 'moral issue' I can see if the 'network effect' of the proprietary exchange formats used by proprietary software, this is an important one but it's not 'proprietary SW' per se: one such SW which would transfer its data in an open format would be perfectly okay for me (if it doesn't try to cripple the open input/output like Microsoft did for example).
Well, not
Posted May 10, 2008 21:02 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Could you please give an example of such a case? Source code available != free software (FSF's "free software", or OSI's "Open Source", just to avoid silly semantic arguments)
Well, not
Posted May 10, 2008 22:49 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
The `we sell you the binary and support, or the software and you get to maintain it' is one of two approaches often used when the supplier is a small software house selling proprietary software to enormous behemoths. (The other approach is `we sell you the binary and escrow the code: if we go under, you get the code and poach our developers'.) This sort of situation inverts the power relationships typical in the consumer software industry, where the software company is the behemoth and the users are trying to get some freedoms. In this case, the *users* are the behemoths and are trying to make sure that the supplier wouldn't put them over a barrel.
Well, not
Posted May 15, 2008 7:01 UTC (Thu) by lysse (subscriber, #3190) [Link]
> I've never understood/agreed with this part of RMS speech (closed source software being imoral) I think it goes something like this: Humans like helping each other out with various problems. For example, if one person figures out how to fix a problem with a particular tool he has, he can share that fix with everyone else using that tool, and someone using a different tool can look at the fix, pull a useful idea out of it, and enhance his own tool... Now this might be desirable for all kinds of practical reasons, but it's also *morally* positive; answers are shared out of mutual respect, a co-operative spirit, a desire to raise the bar for everyone. But even misanthropes see virtue in self-sufficiency - the moral imperative to take responsibility for one's own destiny, in this case by ensuring one can repair one's own equipment. But non-free software prohibits these practices at their very source - by prohibiting people from fixing their own, or their neighbours', problems. Therefore, it prevents people from acting morally, both for themselves and towards each other - a property which makes it immoral in itself, even if it had no other practical problems. That's how I always understood the argument anyway. It's not a question of "if you use this kind of software you're an evil person who makes baby Jesus cry". It's a question of "this kind of software won't *let* you act morally with regard to it".