3 ms·

Condolences to the family. It sounds like he was a very thoughtful and principled person.

by neilv 2y ago

OutOfHere 2y ago
[flagged]
- henry700 2y ago
  [flagged]
- tivert 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
    Yeah - what Disney does with the mouse is egregious, but if I write a book or creating painting I'd like to not have a thousand imitators xeroxing away any potential earnings.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    It is nothing like vaccines. Zero. I can easily imagine a thriving world without copyrights, but I cannot without vaccines.
    - tivert 2y ago
      > It is nothing like vaccines. Zero. I can easily imagine a thriving world without copyrights, but I cannot without vaccines. For the record, the world can and did thrive before vaccines were invented, so you don't have to imagine it. Sure there was more sickness and death, but we have plenty of that now, and I doubt you'd consider today's world "not thriving." But ok, then. Imagine that world without copyrights for me. In detail. And answer these questions: 1. You're an author, who's written a wildly successful book in your free time. How do you get paid to become a full-time author? Remember, no copyright means Amazon, B&N, and every other place is making tons of money by printing up their own copies and sells them without giving you any royalties. 2. You've developed some open source software, and would like to use the GPL to keep it that way. Amazon just forked it, and is making tons of money off of it, but is keeping their fork closed. How do you get them to distribute their changes in accordance with the GPL? 3. You're an inventor, and you've spend years and all your savings working on R&D for a brilliant idea and you finally got it working. You don't have much manufacturing muscle, but you managed to get a small batch onto the market. BigCo saw one of your demos, bought one, reverse engineered it, and with their vast resources is undercutting you on price. They're making tons of money, and paying you no royalties. How do you stay in business? Should you have even bothered?
      - OutOfHere 2y ago
        Regarding life without vaccines, the life expectancy could then be very low. Whether this qualifies as "thriving" is subjective. The population as a whole could still thrive, but individuals may not. Regarding your other points: 1. That is a bad argument. Imagine that some people called collectors get to collect royalties from you every time you post a HN comment. Such collectors are paid for moderating comments. Some such collectors are wildly successful. Imagine that "commentright" law protects such people. If commentright law were to go away, how do such people get paid? (It's a fake problem, and copyright law is similarly no different.) In essence, if you love to write, go write, but don't expect artificial laws to save you. 2. To my knowledge, Amazon is not known to violate a preexisting GPL license. Amazon forks only things that were open in the past, but are now no longer open. In doing so, Amazon ensures the fork stays open. There is no license violation. If Amazon is making tons of money, it's probably because the software wasn't AGPL licensed in the first place. 3. This has already happened twice to me, and frankly, I am not worried. I can still carve out my limited focused niche. I try to look at the bigger picture which is the picture of AGI, of the future of humanity, not of artificial protections or even of individual success. Your beliefs are shaped by the culture you were exposed to as an adolescent. If you had grown up in Tibet, or if you had tried LSD a few times in your life, or were exposed to say Buddhism, your beliefs about individual greed would be very different.
        tivert 2y ago
        > Regarding life without vaccines, the life expectancy could then be very low. Whether this qualifies as "thriving" is subjective. The life expectancy would not be "very low" without vaccines. It wasn't especially before they were invented, and it wouldn't be afterwards (especially with modern medicine minus vaccines). > In essence, if you love to write, go write, but don't expect artificial laws to save you. All laws are "artificial." You might as well go the full measure, and say if you want to keep what's "yours" defend it yourself. Don't expect some artificial private property laws to save you. And if writing is turned purely into a hobby of the passionate, they'll be a lot less of it, because the people who are good at it will be forced to expend their energy doing other things to support themselves (if they're a member of the idle rich). > 2. To my knowledge, Amazon is not known to violate a preexisting GPL license. You missed the point. Copyright is foundational to the GPL: without it, no GPL. "Amazon is not known to violate a preexisting GPL license," for the same reason they don't print up their own "pirated" copies of the latest bestseller to tell, instead of buying copies from the publisher: it would be illegal. > 3. This has already happened twice to me, and frankly, I am not worried. I can still carve out my limited focused niche. It did, did it? Tell the story. > your beliefs about individual greed would be very different. What do you mean my "beliefs about individual greed?" Do tell.
- dang 2y ago
  > Not that thoughtful. Copyright law is mostly harmful. Apparently he couldn't realize this simple conclusion. "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 2y ago
      The GP comment seems innocuous to me. Taking the thread on a generic tangent about copyright law, spiced with personal putdowns, is clearly not ok.
      - OutOfHere 2y ago
        My right to flag comments was previously unfairly taken away from me. Maybe if I still had this right, I would've just flagged and moved on, but I didn't have this right. I don't even know why it was taken away.
        jjulius 2y ago
        If "Condolences, he seems to have been a principled person" is flaggable to you, then I think you may be letting some very strong beliefs or biases cloud your judgement.
        OutOfHere 2y ago
        [flagged]
        jjulius 2y ago
        Even thoughtful people can be wrong, make mistakes, or have lapses in judgement. Nobody is perfect, we all have flaws. Edit: Heck, even by definition, "thoughtful" doesn't mean "accurate". You can put a lot of thought and consideration into something and still end up with a different viewpoint than your neighbor. That's okay, that's life. Edit 2: "Didn't get his way"? He was part of an ongoing trial that hadn't concluded yet, so it hadn't been decided whether or not he "got his way". Setting that very obvious fact aside, we have no idea what he actually wanted or hoped for here, or from in life in general, or why he made this final decision, and to suggest otherwise is about as "thoughtful" as you insinuate he was.

Condolences to the family. It sounds like he was a very thoughtful and principled person.

by neilv 2y ago

Condolences to the family. It sounds like he was a very thoughtful and principled person.

OutOfHere 2y ago

[flagged]

henry700 2y ago
[flagged]
tivert 2y ago
[flagged]
- SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
  Yeah - what Disney does with the mouse is egregious, but if I write a book or creating painting I'd like to not have a thousand imitators xeroxing away any potential earnings.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  It is nothing like vaccines. Zero. I can easily imagine a thriving world without copyrights, but I cannot without vaccines.
  - tivert 2y ago
    > It is nothing like vaccines. Zero. I can easily imagine a thriving world without copyrights, but I cannot without vaccines. For the record, the world can and did thrive before vaccines were invented, so you don't have to imagine it. Sure there was more sickness and death, but we have plenty of that now, and I doubt you'd consider today's world "not thriving." But ok, then. Imagine that world without copyrights for me. In detail. And answer these questions: 1. You're an author, who's written a wildly successful book in your free time. How do you get paid to become a full-time author? Remember, no copyright means Amazon, B&N, and every other place is making tons of money by printing up their own copies and sells them without giving you any royalties. 2. You've developed some open source software, and would like to use the GPL to keep it that way. Amazon just forked it, and is making tons of money off of it, but is keeping their fork closed. How do you get them to distribute their changes in accordance with the GPL? 3. You're an inventor, and you've spend years and all your savings working on R&D for a brilliant idea and you finally got it working. You don't have much manufacturing muscle, but you managed to get a small batch onto the market. BigCo saw one of your demos, bought one, reverse engineered it, and with their vast resources is undercutting you on price. They're making tons of money, and paying you no royalties. How do you stay in business? Should you have even bothered?
    - OutOfHere 2y ago
      Regarding life without vaccines, the life expectancy could then be very low. Whether this qualifies as "thriving" is subjective. The population as a whole could still thrive, but individuals may not. Regarding your other points: 1. That is a bad argument. Imagine that some people called collectors get to collect royalties from you every time you post a HN comment. Such collectors are paid for moderating comments. Some such collectors are wildly successful. Imagine that "commentright" law protects such people. If commentright law were to go away, how do such people get paid? (It's a fake problem, and copyright law is similarly no different.) In essence, if you love to write, go write, but don't expect artificial laws to save you. 2. To my knowledge, Amazon is not known to violate a preexisting GPL license. Amazon forks only things that were open in the past, but are now no longer open. In doing so, Amazon ensures the fork stays open. There is no license violation. If Amazon is making tons of money, it's probably because the software wasn't AGPL licensed in the first place. 3. This has already happened twice to me, and frankly, I am not worried. I can still carve out my limited focused niche. I try to look at the bigger picture which is the picture of AGI, of the future of humanity, not of artificial protections or even of individual success. Your beliefs are shaped by the culture you were exposed to as an adolescent. If you had grown up in Tibet, or if you had tried LSD a few times in your life, or were exposed to say Buddhism, your beliefs about individual greed would be very different.
      - tivert 2y ago
        > Regarding life without vaccines, the life expectancy could then be very low. Whether this qualifies as "thriving" is subjective. The life expectancy would not be "very low" without vaccines. It wasn't especially before they were invented, and it wouldn't be afterwards (especially with modern medicine minus vaccines). > In essence, if you love to write, go write, but don't expect artificial laws to save you. All laws are "artificial." You might as well go the full measure, and say if you want to keep what's "yours" defend it yourself. Don't expect some artificial private property laws to save you. And if writing is turned purely into a hobby of the passionate, they'll be a lot less of it, because the people who are good at it will be forced to expend their energy doing other things to support themselves (if they're a member of the idle rich). > 2. To my knowledge, Amazon is not known to violate a preexisting GPL license. You missed the point. Copyright is foundational to the GPL: without it, no GPL. "Amazon is not known to violate a preexisting GPL license," for the same reason they don't print up their own "pirated" copies of the latest bestseller to tell, instead of buying copies from the publisher: it would be illegal. > 3. This has already happened twice to me, and frankly, I am not worried. I can still carve out my limited focused niche. It did, did it? Tell the story. > your beliefs about individual greed would be very different. What do you mean my "beliefs about individual greed?" Do tell.
dang 2y ago
> Not that thoughtful. Copyright law is mostly harmful. Apparently he couldn't realize this simple conclusion. "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 2y ago
    The GP comment seems innocuous to me. Taking the thread on a generic tangent about copyright law, spiced with personal putdowns, is clearly not ok.
    - OutOfHere 2y ago
      My right to flag comments was previously unfairly taken away from me. Maybe if I still had this right, I would've just flagged and moved on, but I didn't have this right. I don't even know why it was taken away.
      - jjulius 2y ago
        If "Condolences, he seems to have been a principled person" is flaggable to you, then I think you may be letting some very strong beliefs or biases cloud your judgement.
        OutOfHere 2y ago
        [flagged]
        jjulius 2y ago
        Even thoughtful people can be wrong, make mistakes, or have lapses in judgement. Nobody is perfect, we all have flaws. Edit: Heck, even by definition, "thoughtful" doesn't mean "accurate". You can put a lot of thought and consideration into something and still end up with a different viewpoint than your neighbor. That's okay, that's life. Edit 2: "Didn't get his way"? He was part of an ongoing trial that hadn't concluded yet, so it hadn't been decided whether or not he "got his way". Setting that very obvious fact aside, we have no idea what he actually wanted or hoped for here, or from in life in general, or why he made this final decision, and to suggest otherwise is about as "thoughtful" as you insinuate he was.