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Considers profit "unethical", gives work away for free, mad that people take free work and use it for their own purposes. You can't have it both ways. You can

by imgabe 3y ago

Considers profit "unethical", gives work away for free, mad that people take free work and use it for their own purposes. You can't have it both ways. You can either give stuff away and realize that once you give it away you have no control over what anyone does with it, or you can charge for it and get paid up front (and ultimately still have no control over what happens to it after it leaves your hands). Are you making art because you want to share your vision or what? If so, then share it and be glad that your vision got out there. If not, charge for your work and make sure you get paid first. Don't whine and cry that you didn't get paid after you decided that getting paid was evil or whatever.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Giving something for free doesn’t mean giving it for others to make a profit. We have copyright and other legal rules for a reason. Likewise, many open source licenses don’t allow for people to profit off what you donated to the world. It’s not a forgone conclusion that everything must be exploited for money by someone.
- imgabe 3y ago
  In theory, sure. In practice, if you don't have the money to file the lawsuits to enforce it, no you don't. And if you think making money is unethical or exploitative, then it's unlikely you are going to be able to have the money to enforce whatever rules you think anyone who uses the stuff you put out there for free should follow.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    I see, so theft is right so long as you get away with it? Fortunately you actually can lodge lawsuits in such cases even if you can’t afford it so long as you find either a lawyer who works on contingency in expectation of a settlement or one who believes in something. In this case, almost any lawyer in the field of copyright would be eager to simply make their name with a case that sets precedent in such an important domain. Fwiw, I make a considerable amount of money, yet also write and contribute to free software. I think it’s unethical and exploitive to take my labor given for free to the community and claim it as your own for your personal enrichment. I think I’m not alone in this specific community on hacker news. So, in theory you’re right. In practice, the libertarian ideal of mad max exploitation of anything you can find not bolted down appeals to a few small number of people, and the rest of us are happy to defend artists and creators from that small population.
    - imgabe 3y ago
      Copying is not theft. > I think it’s unethical and exploitive to take my labor given for free to the community and claim it as your own for your personal enrichment. Nobody is claiming anything is their own. You gave it away. You did the labor, it will always have been done regardless of what anyone does with it after that. There is no difference in the effect on you, so why are you mad about it? If you want to lock it in a box so nobody else can ever look at your precious baby, then do that. Don't put it out where anyone can use it and then get mad when they use it. What did you make it for if you didn't want anyone to use it? Presumably you got something out of making whatever you did, and that was enough reason to make it. If you wanted to keep some exclusive right to it, then you shouldn't have made it publicly available.
waffleiron 3y ago
> Don't whine and cry that you didn't get paid after you decided that getting paid was evil or whatever. Software and source code comes with the most complex licenses and terms of use, but an artist isn’t allowed to make a small request that others don’t profit of her work without people on a software forum saying that is whining and crying…
- imgabe 3y ago
  I would be against those software licenses as well. Where I make my own code public I try to use MIT license whenever possible. If I don't want people to copy my code ... I don't make it public. It's not that complicated. Fully open source software has probably created more economic value in the past 60 years than anything else in human history. We should be trying to share more knowledge with each other, not come up with new and more complicated ways to restrict it.

by imgabe 3y ago

fnordpiglet 3y ago

Giving something for free doesn’t mean giving it for others to make a profit. We have copyright and other legal rules for a reason. Likewise, many open source licenses don’t allow for people to profit off what you donated to the world. It’s not a forgone conclusion that everything must be exploited for money by someone.

imgabe 3y ago
In theory, sure. In practice, if you don't have the money to file the lawsuits to enforce it, no you don't. And if you think making money is unethical or exploitative, then it's unlikely you are going to be able to have the money to enforce whatever rules you think anyone who uses the stuff you put out there for free should follow.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  I see, so theft is right so long as you get away with it? Fortunately you actually can lodge lawsuits in such cases even if you can’t afford it so long as you find either a lawyer who works on contingency in expectation of a settlement or one who believes in something. In this case, almost any lawyer in the field of copyright would be eager to simply make their name with a case that sets precedent in such an important domain. Fwiw, I make a considerable amount of money, yet also write and contribute to free software. I think it’s unethical and exploitive to take my labor given for free to the community and claim it as your own for your personal enrichment. I think I’m not alone in this specific community on hacker news. So, in theory you’re right. In practice, the libertarian ideal of mad max exploitation of anything you can find not bolted down appeals to a few small number of people, and the rest of us are happy to defend artists and creators from that small population.
  - imgabe 3y ago
    Copying is not theft. > I think it’s unethical and exploitive to take my labor given for free to the community and claim it as your own for your personal enrichment. Nobody is claiming anything is their own. You gave it away. You did the labor, it will always have been done regardless of what anyone does with it after that. There is no difference in the effect on you, so why are you mad about it? If you want to lock it in a box so nobody else can ever look at your precious baby, then do that. Don't put it out where anyone can use it and then get mad when they use it. What did you make it for if you didn't want anyone to use it? Presumably you got something out of making whatever you did, and that was enough reason to make it. If you wanted to keep some exclusive right to it, then you shouldn't have made it publicly available.

waffleiron 3y ago

> Don't whine and cry that you didn't get paid after you decided that getting paid was evil or whatever. Software and source code comes with the most complex licenses and terms of use, but an artist isn’t allowed to make a small request that others don’t profit of her work without people on a software forum saying that is whining and crying…

imgabe 3y ago
I would be against those software licenses as well. Where I make my own code public I try to use MIT license whenever possible. If I don't want people to copy my code ... I don't make it public. It's not that complicated. Fully open source software has probably created more economic value in the past 60 years than anything else in human history. We should be trying to share more knowledge with each other, not come up with new and more complicated ways to restrict it.