4 ms·

Okay. So for someone like me, in a position where I have very little money and I want to get out of that situation, to hear "Whatever people make should be fre

by palish 19y ago

Okay. So for someone like me, in a position where I have very little money and I want to get out of that situation, to hear "Whatever people make should be free" is just silly. Yes, open source is wonderful, and I really want to contribute to it. But needing to feed myself everyday and to pay for my car and a place to live takes precedence. Would you tell PG that Viaweb should've been free? Why? Because it's a service? There's no fundamental difference between a service and a piece of desktop software, except you can't steal it.

rms 19y ago
You summed it up yourself. The fundamental difference between a service and a piece of desktop software is that you can't steal it. In a society where everyone has access to free software and an internal moral compass is the only thing that deters us from piracy, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to release desktop software with no service component.
- palish 19y ago
  You summed it up yourself. Stealing desktop software is just that: stealing. Continue to steal other people's work (obviously nothing will change your mind), but don't lie to yourself by thinking it's not stealing. It is.
  - pg 19y ago
    Copying music or a movie or software in violation of its license terms is not really stealing. When you steal something, the other person doesn't have it anymore. E.g. if someone steals my watch, I don't have a watch. But the owner of IP doesn't have an actual loss when you copy it without permission. At most they forego some revenue they feel they're entitled to. People in the music industry have been doing their best to stretch the despised word "stealing" over onto this new behavior they want to discourage, but that doesn't make it so. At best it's a metaphor to call illicit copying "stealing," but really more of a lie.
    - palish 19y ago
      Darn, now I'm going to be downmodded into oblivion ;) But I don't understand. Let's say Wal-Mart is selling a chair. Some guy comes in and steals the chair. Wal-Mart "forgoes some revenue they feel their entitled to" because of the missing chair. Except wait, they were legally entitled to that revenue, same with music's licensing agreements. The only difference is you can't prove that someone that stole music would've bought it if he didn't have the option to steal it. ..So because it's a gray area it's not stealing? Making up a new word to call the behavior just to make everyone feel better seems like a bad idea.
      - pg 19y ago
        The difference is that the instance of the chair cost Wal-Mart money. Imagine if you had a machine that could reproduce something from a photograph of it. You could then go to a shop and take a photo of a chair, and reproduce yourself a chair from it. But the shop wouldn't take an actual loss in that case. There's nothing gray about that difference. If you steal a chair, the value of their inventory decreases by one chair, and if you merely reproduce one from a photo, it remains the same. Nor do we need to make up a new word for the behavior. The English word is "copying." It's centuries old at least, and the behavior, in the case of manuscripts, goes back millennia. So I'm not proposing we use a new word to make everyone feel better. I'm proposing we continue to use the existing word, instead of the one the music industry is trying to get us to switch to to make everyone feel worse.
        palish 19y ago
        The word "copying" works if it's not illegal, but it is. You have to say "illegal copying" for accuracy. Let's look at it from another angle. Let's say someone paints a nice painting of a hand scrunching up a piece of cloth. If you think about it, an original painting is a form of artificial DRM. It's artificially more valuable than a copy, which causes implicit DRM. But let's say it wasn't. For whatever reason, people just didn't feel like the originals were worth paying for. What do the artists do who want to make a living that way, if they're not good at other skills yet? Maybe they've devoted their whole life to painting. It puts a lot of creative people out of business for no good reason. It's not because their work isn't valuable, it's just because people can copy it. Do you think they should be protected?
  - rms 19y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism
randallsquared 19y ago
It's not that "whatever people make should be free". It's that buying something should not automatically restrict your rights to what you already own. If you can figure out how to make a non-easily-copied copy, then you won't need to forcefully (with law) restrict people from using their own computers after purchasing your copy. But the ease of copying (and thus competition) doesn't justify using force. Web applications are one way to solve the problem of "how do I sell use of software without making the copy they're using easily copied". Other ways include, for example, DRM, but web applications are a far more robust solution than DRM, for the class of applications they can provide solutions for.
- palish 19y ago
  How would you write a web application to deliver some music without being able to steal it? You can't. It's not a panacea. People have to be moral. If you're 15, fine, steal it, because you can't buy it anyway, and it's not hurting anyone. If you're 25 and you have money, don't be selfish. It is stealing. And if it's stealing, then laws apply. They protect ownership rights.
  - randallsquared 19y ago
    "How would you write a web application to deliver some music without being able to steal it? You can't." No, web applications are not a panacea. But some business model will work, and finding that business model is far more profitable than attempting to legislate a hold on digital copying. If there's some particular type of thing for which there is no profitable method of distribution, then that thing won't be produced for profit. Law can distort this to a degree, but such distortions always produce more problems than they solve. The market always wins. :)
    - palish 19y ago
      Well, okay, I totally agree with that. I just feel bad about it because there is intrinsic value in a piece of music, as there is in a book. It's creative, and as such it's a thousand times more valuable than being able to do backflips or other specialized skills. ..But because it's so easily copied, it's not really worth anything unless the laws enforce it, which can be heavy-handed. So I don't know the right balance.

by palish 19y ago

rms 19y ago

You summed it up yourself. The fundamental difference between a service and a piece of desktop software is that you can't steal it. In a society where everyone has access to free software and an internal moral compass is the only thing that deters us from piracy, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to release desktop software with no service component.

palish 19y ago
You summed it up yourself. Stealing desktop software is just that: stealing. Continue to steal other people's work (obviously nothing will change your mind), but don't lie to yourself by thinking it's not stealing. It is.
- pg 19y ago
  Copying music or a movie or software in violation of its license terms is not really stealing. When you steal something, the other person doesn't have it anymore. E.g. if someone steals my watch, I don't have a watch. But the owner of IP doesn't have an actual loss when you copy it without permission. At most they forego some revenue they feel they're entitled to. People in the music industry have been doing their best to stretch the despised word "stealing" over onto this new behavior they want to discourage, but that doesn't make it so. At best it's a metaphor to call illicit copying "stealing," but really more of a lie.
  - palish 19y ago
    Darn, now I'm going to be downmodded into oblivion ;) But I don't understand. Let's say Wal-Mart is selling a chair. Some guy comes in and steals the chair. Wal-Mart "forgoes some revenue they feel their entitled to" because of the missing chair. Except wait, they were legally entitled to that revenue, same with music's licensing agreements. The only difference is you can't prove that someone that stole music would've bought it if he didn't have the option to steal it. ..So because it's a gray area it's not stealing? Making up a new word to call the behavior just to make everyone feel better seems like a bad idea.
    - pg 19y ago
      The difference is that the instance of the chair cost Wal-Mart money. Imagine if you had a machine that could reproduce something from a photograph of it. You could then go to a shop and take a photo of a chair, and reproduce yourself a chair from it. But the shop wouldn't take an actual loss in that case. There's nothing gray about that difference. If you steal a chair, the value of their inventory decreases by one chair, and if you merely reproduce one from a photo, it remains the same. Nor do we need to make up a new word for the behavior. The English word is "copying." It's centuries old at least, and the behavior, in the case of manuscripts, goes back millennia. So I'm not proposing we use a new word to make everyone feel better. I'm proposing we continue to use the existing word, instead of the one the music industry is trying to get us to switch to to make everyone feel worse.
      - palish 19y ago
        The word "copying" works if it's not illegal, but it is. You have to say "illegal copying" for accuracy. Let's look at it from another angle. Let's say someone paints a nice painting of a hand scrunching up a piece of cloth. If you think about it, an original painting is a form of artificial DRM. It's artificially more valuable than a copy, which causes implicit DRM. But let's say it wasn't. For whatever reason, people just didn't feel like the originals were worth paying for. What do the artists do who want to make a living that way, if they're not good at other skills yet? Maybe they've devoted their whole life to painting. It puts a lot of creative people out of business for no good reason. It's not because their work isn't valuable, it's just because people can copy it. Do you think they should be protected?
- rms 19y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism

randallsquared 19y ago

It's not that "whatever people make should be free". It's that buying something should not automatically restrict your rights to what you already own. If you can figure out how to make a non-easily-copied copy, then you won't need to forcefully (with law) restrict people from using their own computers after purchasing your copy. But the ease of copying (and thus competition) doesn't justify using force. Web applications are one way to solve the problem of "how do I sell use of software without making the copy they're using easily copied". Other ways include, for example, DRM, but web applications are a far more robust solution than DRM, for the class of applications they can provide solutions for.

palish 19y ago
How would you write a web application to deliver some music without being able to steal it? You can't. It's not a panacea. People have to be moral. If you're 15, fine, steal it, because you can't buy it anyway, and it's not hurting anyone. If you're 25 and you have money, don't be selfish. It is stealing. And if it's stealing, then laws apply. They protect ownership rights.
- randallsquared 19y ago
  "How would you write a web application to deliver some music without being able to steal it? You can't." No, web applications are not a panacea. But some business model will work, and finding that business model is far more profitable than attempting to legislate a hold on digital copying. If there's some particular type of thing for which there is no profitable method of distribution, then that thing won't be produced for profit. Law can distort this to a degree, but such distortions always produce more problems than they solve. The market always wins. :)
  - palish 19y ago
    Well, okay, I totally agree with that. I just feel bad about it because there is intrinsic value in a piece of music, as there is in a book. It's creative, and as such it's a thousand times more valuable than being able to do backflips or other specialized skills. ..But because it's so easily copied, it's not really worth anything unless the laws enforce it, which can be heavy-handed. So I don't know the right balance.