French law says different release dates may be required, CSS enforces that. You can argue CSS helps to prevent people from breaking french law.
Using other's computers is illegal in U.S. Your computer requires a password to login. Password system helps to enforce the law, by making it harder for people to casually break it.
Where do you get "login systems are illegal" from that? Your arguement that having a law obviates a measure that makes it harder to break that law is flawed.
Since when was redundancy of that kind likely to
cause tech measure to fail? By your logic- since computer cracking is illegal, I should get rid of my login system and encryption, because they are now unnecessary.
How exactly does it become easier to attack it? "Well, your format is in full agreement with the law monsieur, you will have to change it."
Region coding is bad because it only exists to gouge consumers, and as a side effect makes everything a little less compatible. Having laws that can be used to justify it is never a good thing.
There is nothing wrong with the headline. I'm starting to think that the people who whine about headlines/katz/trolls/the world are simply another kind of troll.
for the GPL, having multiple copyright holders can be an advantage. If someone were to somehow influence the people running FSF or some other organization/single person holding rights over the code (bribes maybe, i dont know) that code could escape the GPL. But if hundreds of people own the copyright collectively, then it can likely never escape the GPL. (like the linux kernel)
If the Free stuff starts to overtake to non-free as you said, there may well be less and less non-free stuff. Especially once the majority of libraries and toolkits are under a true GPL rather than the lesser kind.
Ideally all code would be Free, then licenses would cease to matter, and we could concentrate on constructive activities. The abolition of copyright completely would serve the same purpose.
Say you have an object with a couple pointers to dynamically allocated memory. If you make a copy of that object (say you pass by value instead of pass by reference), then you'll have 2 copies of the pointer to the one dynamically allocated chunk of memory. If that happens, you won't know when to safely delete the memory.
Copy constructors dont allow such behaivhor. Any class containing pointers to dynamic memory will have to define a copy constr and op= to handle these cases. You must either use ownership flags, refcounted buffer, or simply new copies.
As for new being expensive- yes that is true. However you are always free to devise your own memory allocation helpers where it is expensive enough to matter. 80% of the time I can avoid using the heap altogether- and when I do its in places where it is handled automatically by contr/destr, to minimize the possibility of a leak.
Dealing with all the myriad ways and places usually calls for some programmer restraint in C++. What I like though, is that I have choice and control. Some prefer a simpler and more restricted way of doing things, which has its attractions.
Well its nice that you mention that garbage collection is available in C++: that means two things. For those who want it- its there. For those who dont- you dont have to take its overhead.
About smart pointers- well yes they can be abused. I'm not sure what you mean by two instances in one chunk of memory- I do however use shared buffers with reference counts. (one instance in one spot, just shared) Its actually rather simple- just a few access functions to handle its interface. Could even be a little template class if you fancy having all types of shared objects. I never get into massive
amounts of overloaded operators.
About "your program doesnt work"- the idea was that the developer would use leak detectors, to verify that his disciplined code does not actually leak. Even if it does have a leak in a strange place- that will hardly make it crash or anything- you may just have to restart it after a long time running. And while this buggy program runs it will probably be fast.
About memory bloat: its choosing between caching lots of objects that you may or may not use again and constantly creating them anew. Either way has a draw back and an advantage. Also considerable is the pool of memory the GC has to keep around just for itself to have room. (Newer GC schemes are always improving in that aspect though)
Another nice advantage of C++ programming: many programs dont even need to use the heap whatsoever Everything on the stack and maybe a static global or two.
In java you have references on the stack to things that are on the heap- needed or not.
what this with greenish red? Its called yellow already. And this new color youre imagining- its like a perception of saturation. Some colors we see are duller than they would - thats all there is to it. compare RGB(255,0,0) to RGB(255,25,25). The first appears sharper to you- you can tell the difference. Thats all it is.
you can fix them in development time by detecting them. Especially easy to avoid if you confine new/delete to constr/destr. Makes it much easier to find memory leaks than in classic C, because you only have to consider class scope for the use of that memory. Toughest part is when destructors dont get called properly- but you get used to that one.
Compare that to the memory bloat problem: no real way to duck that one without taking a hit somewhere else. Sure you program works- but what is people biggest complaint about it now: slowness. To optimize the memory handling of a GC'd language program is tough and non-trivial. And since the code is all technically correct- there is no objective way to know that you have really fixed the problem.
Whereas with a typical compiled program, once there are no memory leaks, any optimizations are pure bonus- and usually very easy to figure out how to do/implement. A large portion of production programming is hand optimization. The very act of staying alive is an act of hand optimization. Its what humans do.
I'm really surprised how so many free software advocates really rag on C++ continuosly. Ive been reading rant after rant about how C++ is really a bad solution to just about any problem.
I know and use several languages (C,perl,python,tcl,FORTRAN,pascal,lisp,C++,java,BA SIC) and of all of them, C++ is my run away favorite. Why: its the only one of the languages I know thats really about what you can do, while the others are all about limiting you.
C++ is the sharper blade, it is full of features that can use if you want to and know how- but you dont have to. It gets its bad rep because you can also use it if you dont know how. (Its also suffering from a moving ABI and g++ is still maturing, but those issues are easy enough to work around.)
btw java is my least favorite language- mostly because of all the marketing and hype associated with it. To me its just an unremarkable lisp subset with C++ ish syntax and oft times a virtual machine backend.
not quite. it would definitly be a color you would recognize- just clearer and brighter.
Try to imagine that the set of distinct colors is a circle. The set of mixed colors are the points inside the circle. Our trichromat vision is a triangle of 3 roughly evenly spaced points on this circle. The tetrachrmatic woman has a forth point very close to the green point. The set of exact colors she can see is only a tiny bit more than we can, and the colors she knows are the same as ours. The only difference is that certain
yellowish colors to her are clearer/ more dicernable.
So you really think management and money make something good? Im my experience, they both are major contributors to screwing things up. Its hard to believe that a corporation can produce useful code at all.
If all the 'free software zealots' were independantly wealthy enough to not need day jobs
then there probably wouldnt be any crufty 'proprietary' software at all.
On the argument that high level languages are better than low level ones- I must agree. The cost of higher level languages is always made up for by the improved ease of use. Java is somewhat higher level than C++ - you would think then that it would follow that Java should be a better programming platform for large applications.
It turns out that this is not the case. Although C++ allows egregious coding decisions- it does not disallow good coding practices. It is the highest level language I know that gives me complete control of what the program I create does. When I program in C++ I can imagine what the assembly created will look like- and what it will do, and how it will do it. With java I cannot. You never really know when or how something will get done.
This is because C++ is about allowing you to do things, whereas most other languages restrict what you can do. It is a sharp tool, and you can hurt yourself with bad form, but it allows you to make fully object oriented code for everything from device drivers, to gui applications, or even JVM's.
And another thing- Garbage collection. When you
dont have it you may have to hunt down memory leaks. But when you do have it you must hunt down memory bloat- the converse problem. Many java programs bloat up is size because uneeded large objects are left laying around referenced. This is a problem I consider equivalent to memory leaks, but much harder to detect and debug.
For me, using java to get something done in a large application feels like trying to use a play-doh knife to carve a turkey.
You are very close to correct- however the new colors are probably not that unexpected- we can approximate them by mixing colors that we can see.
Imagine that the set of colors is a circle- and the set of colors we can see is an equilateral triangle inside it. There are some points near the outer edge of the circle that we cannot truly see- but we can apporximate them. A person who could see the entire circle would simply have a sharper experiance of color- but would not truly see colors that we cannot imagine.
I'm sorry, but every sloaris box Ive ever seen was terrible slow responding in as far as user interface goes.
While I will admit that the RISC/SCSI trumps the intel architecture any day, I doubt that solaris is really better than a good BSD or linux based system.
A person who works coding for 60hrs a week may be doing it for fun. It still makes sense to pay all the coders the same in such a company because its the most fair. If enough of them feel that a given coder is not devoting enough time to his work- they could vote him out of the company. To make decisions about who should be hired or fired there should be a personnel commitee who are elected from the set of coders.
Where there may be issues with pay would be the unglamorous non-hobbylike jobs such as manning a tech support line or something. Those could either be farmed out to traditional firms or taken on as bonus pay by someone from the main group. Also emergency overtime paid for by clients could be easily tacked onto the base pay as a bonus. But voluntary long hours dont call for anything special. There should really be no set standard hours- perhaps just a weekly minimum of time spent on work related issues (30 hrs?).
Also there should be annual bonus awards- where the entire group votes on those project groups most deserving of a reward bonus. These could stand as extra incentives. the main incentive is of course the freedom. Anycoder getting base pay can work on any project he likes- so long as the main group thinks it is not total garbage. This gives an idividual freedom to do their hobby for a living. If they are ambitious they could seek out menial duties for extra pay (taking on support duties, writing docs, sysadminning) or seek sitation awards for excellence, or perhaps they could go for recognition by joining on of the steering commitees.
If you actully live in a foreign country without copyright- then you are essentially a non-person to the US, so they will send the storm troopers to get you.
Should you live here- well then you are about to become a legal chew-toy.
Now popular defiance of copyright is prevelant here- but I dont know if its going to result in
more draconian laws or a submission to reality.
And our economy is so heavily copyright based, that its going to be a really hard knot to untangle fairly.
An excelltent first step would be to limit copyright to its original 14 years for any and all types of information regardless. I would even agree to let it begin Today, so that any current copyright holders would have 14 years to prepare.
Main problem is that I doesnt sound like one of those issues you can whip up a frenzy on. The main force in copyright opinion is the steady heavy hand of those who make their livings by it. They are fine with it, so they want no change.
For now we will have to settle for GPL-like licenses. Eventually the GPL may spread out from software to encompass other types of information.
Maybe we will realize the copyrightless world despite the law of copyright.
I could imagine a rich philanthropist doing the world an amazing favor: Buying a content company, then exclusivly relicensing all its works as GPL-like. This would create a large initial body of work that could spawn an new economy of freedom.
Human nature is very simple. I provide you with updates, proof-read copies, I taylor content to your need, I provide high speed download of quality copies, I make the next chapter in the series. I interact with my readers, and they support me- If they want me to continue creating for them.
Oh sure anybody could try to make derivative works based upon mine. If the story is simple and formulaic then then really dont need me. However should they really want to make a good flick for their audience, then they may well want my help.
And since they have the same set of issues I have- namely that I could write a "book" based upon one of their movies- the playing field is still fair.
Now I could easily image a writer's guild if you will- which is basically a clearing house of authors. It would make money by selling subscriptions and services. It would accept donations and support. It could charge say $5 to participate in a vote to decide which authors to keep on the tab and which to let move on.
Such a guild would only work with either GPL'd books or with no copyright laws around.
And trademarks are a law I support- that way you can easily distinguish a brand you like. However copyrights and patents hurt us more than they help us. In the long run- even the bug patent owners would benefit greatly. The only people who would be negatively affected are those who really dont do anything.
All of human creativity is based upon (unauthorized) copying. We are a society of people who cannot survive alone neither physically or mentally. If we were to apply copyright to its logical conclusion then no-one would be able to create anything. Noone exists in a vacuum- we all mimic each other- the only innovations we make are at best incremental. Our best scientists stand upon the shoulders of giants (whereas our programmers stand on each other's toes).
Half the english language would be under copyright- the other half patented. Even the most trivial and basic science (such as math) would be owed by some company.
Copyright and patents are a bad incentive mechanism. It serves to impede progress- not to encourage it. Our economy would suffer a temporary setback- when large publishers and studios (that produce nothing but overhead) fold, but in the long run we would all gain from it.
We would have A system where money went to those who deserve it- rather than those who do not.
Creators of work would be paid by commisson, patrons, or service charges. There would be no selling of "copies", which was never a good idea to begin with.
There is really no need to guarantee a publisher money. However, there are plenty of reasons to pay authors. Getting rid of copyright cuts out the middleman.
I would refuse to provide them with the source code. So would all my competitors. Now what do they do?
Answer: They buy my object code, or my competitor's object code, or go without.
Mrrrp! Wrong- they take it for free. Since you have to give away copies of your binaries for them to work, you sell one copy- then the whole world takes it for free (legally). How can you sell copies?
You try to sell subscriptions? Well one person buys a subscription then forwards copies of all binaries to anyone he knows.
Perhaps you have gotten the idea that people like to pay for things needlessly. If so I'd have a business where I resold air in invisible containers for high prices.
Pure ASP? Well GPLv2 has nothing on that either- but you cannot solve all problems via Remote Execution (Net goes down & MSWord crashes?). Besides- any single employee or security breach reveals your binaries and/or source- then the whole world gets it all for free anyway.
Now as for laws providing incentives to create- Bah! way wrong. Sure everybody wants to be able to make a living- but to say that greed begets creativity is to utter a contradiction in terms. The people who are motivated primarily by laws guaranteeing them revenue are not creators- they are practical businessmen.
I know that the source code in the current system is required to make it work. All I am saying is that in a copyright free world, software such as MSWord or your dongle checker would not exist, because for minimal example- warez sites would be 100% legal. (Have you met an uncracked copy protection scheme? (I've not) ) This decimates companies who try to make a buck selling copies.
So what I am saying is that only "free" code would survive w/ot copyright.
Disclosure of source code does not defeat copyright law. A program has no more or less legal protection if it is released as source
code or as object code only.
Thats not what I said. I said that defeat of copyright law obviates required disclosure of source code (as well as making it unenforceable).
If I write a computer program and distribute it as object-code-only, my customers are forced to come to me for upgrades and bug
fixes.
Heh- who are your customers in a copyrightless world? they would probably demand the source code since the only way they would hire you to make something for them would be a one-time commision- after that they have right to do what ever they want including giving it away etc. If you put copyprotection in it, they could let the warez crowd fix that for them. It would be pointless to even try to run the scam your speak of. That only works in the world of copyright.
If you have an email or other site we could continue this argument, I would appreciate. Hotmail killed my inactive account.
when there is no copyright there is no incentive to hide the source code except in situations such as Gov't secrets.
The fact that someone could take source and hide it means little if anyone can take his binaries and just give them away. And there would be nothing to stop bald faced reverse engineering. And the open version would get way more development time, because way more people would have access to the code- and at no resource disadvantage.
Only if the law artificially protects people who distribute binary-only, then the mandatory relevation of source code is called for to preserve freedom.
So, the mandatory disclosure of source is simply an artifact of defeating copyright law- not an intrinsic of freedom.
It was built to hoist copyright in its own petard. It spits into the wind, to hit copyright in its own face. It is a way to tie the snake in a knot.
I'm sure RMS would actually prefer a world where there were no copyrights or patents of any sort. The comunity is about sharing- not about preserving the copyright fallacy. And a totally uninhibited world would have the same net effect as a totally GPL one.
The GPL exists in spite of copyright law- not because of it. It is a totally consistent position to champion the GPL and to regale Napster, Abandonware sharing, DeCSS, ogg, LiViD, and so forth.
The backers of copyright, invariably those who wish to turn dime on the work of others, cannot seem to understand that to defend the GPL is not the same as defending their copy"right".
Slashdot Mirror
French law says different release dates may be required, CSS enforces that. You can argue CSS helps to prevent people from breaking french law.
Using other's computers is illegal in U.S. Your computer requires a password to login. Password system helps to enforce the law, by making it harder for people to casually break it.
Where do you get "login systems are illegal" from that? Your arguement that having a law obviates a measure that makes it harder to break that law is flawed.
Anyway, this thread is dead...
How exactly does it become easier to attack it? "Well, your format is in full agreement with the law monsieur, you will have to change it."
Region coding is bad because it only exists to gouge consumers, and as a side effect makes everything a little less compatible. Having laws that can be used to justify it is never a good thing.
There is nothing wrong with the headline. I'm starting to think that the people who whine about headlines/katz/trolls/the world are simply another kind of troll.
for the GPL, having multiple copyright holders can be an advantage. If someone were to somehow influence the people running FSF or some other organization/single person holding rights over the code (bribes maybe, i dont know) that code could escape the GPL. But if hundreds of people own the copyright collectively, then it can likely never escape the GPL. (like the linux kernel)
Ideally all code would be Free, then licenses would cease to matter, and we could concentrate on constructive activities. The abolition of copyright completely would serve the same purpose.
Copy constructors dont allow such behaivhor. Any class containing pointers to dynamic memory will have to define a copy constr and op= to handle these cases. You must either use ownership flags, refcounted buffer, or simply new copies.
As for new being expensive- yes that is true. However you are always free to devise your own memory allocation helpers where it is expensive enough to matter. 80% of the time I can avoid using the heap altogether- and when I do its in places where it is handled automatically by contr/destr, to minimize the possibility of a leak.
Dealing with all the myriad ways and places usually calls for some programmer restraint in C++. What I like though, is that I have choice and control. Some prefer a simpler and more restricted way of doing things, which has its attractions.
About smart pointers- well yes they can be abused. I'm not sure what you mean by two instances in one chunk of memory- I do however use shared buffers with reference counts. (one instance in one spot, just shared) Its actually rather simple- just a few access functions to handle its interface. Could even be a little template class if you fancy having all types of shared objects. I never get into massive amounts of overloaded operators.
About "your program doesnt work"- the idea was that the developer would use leak detectors, to verify that his disciplined code does not actually leak. Even if it does have a leak in a strange place- that will hardly make it crash or anything- you may just have to restart it after a long time running. And while this buggy program runs it will probably be fast.
About memory bloat: its choosing between caching lots of objects that you may or may not use again and constantly creating them anew. Either way has a draw back and an advantage. Also considerable is the pool of memory the GC has to keep around just for itself to have room. (Newer GC schemes are always improving in that aspect though)
Another nice advantage of C++ programming: many programs dont even need to use the heap whatsoever Everything on the stack and maybe a static global or two. In java you have references on the stack to things that are on the heap- needed or not.
what this with greenish red? Its called yellow already. And this new color youre imagining- its like a perception of saturation. Some colors we see are duller than they would - thats all there is to it. compare RGB(255,0,0) to RGB(255,25,25). The first appears sharper to you- you can tell the difference. Thats all it is.
Compare that to the memory bloat problem: no real way to duck that one without taking a hit somewhere else. Sure you program works- but what is people biggest complaint about it now: slowness. To optimize the memory handling of a GC'd language program is tough and non-trivial. And since the code is all technically correct- there is no objective way to know that you have really fixed the problem.
Whereas with a typical compiled program, once there are no memory leaks, any optimizations are pure bonus- and usually very easy to figure out how to do/implement. A large portion of production programming is hand optimization. The very act of staying alive is an act of hand optimization. Its what humans do.
I know and use several languages (C,perl,python,tcl,FORTRAN,pascal,lisp,C++,java,BA SIC) and of all of them, C++ is my run away favorite. Why: its the only one of the languages I know thats really about what you can do, while the others are all about limiting you.
C++ is the sharper blade, it is full of features that can use if you want to and know how- but you dont have to. It gets its bad rep because you can also use it if you dont know how. (Its also suffering from a moving ABI and g++ is still maturing, but those issues are easy enough to work around.)
btw java is my least favorite language- mostly because of all the marketing and hype associated with it. To me its just an unremarkable lisp subset with C++ ish syntax and oft times a virtual machine backend.
Try to imagine that the set of distinct colors is a circle. The set of mixed colors are the points inside the circle. Our trichromat vision is a triangle of 3 roughly evenly spaced points on this circle. The tetrachrmatic woman has a forth point very close to the green point. The set of exact colors she can see is only a tiny bit more than we can, and the colors she knows are the same as ours. The only difference is that certain yellowish colors to her are clearer/ more dicernable.
If all the 'free software zealots' were independantly wealthy enough to not need day jobs then there probably wouldnt be any crufty 'proprietary' software at all.
It turns out that this is not the case. Although C++ allows egregious coding decisions- it does not disallow good coding practices. It is the highest level language I know that gives me complete control of what the program I create does. When I program in C++ I can imagine what the assembly created will look like- and what it will do, and how it will do it. With java I cannot. You never really know when or how something will get done.
This is because C++ is about allowing you to do things, whereas most other languages restrict what you can do. It is a sharp tool, and you can hurt yourself with bad form, but it allows you to make fully object oriented code for everything from device drivers, to gui applications, or even JVM's.
And another thing- Garbage collection. When you dont have it you may have to hunt down memory leaks. But when you do have it you must hunt down memory bloat- the converse problem. Many java programs bloat up is size because uneeded large objects are left laying around referenced. This is a problem I consider equivalent to memory leaks, but much harder to detect and debug.
For me, using java to get something done in a large application feels like trying to use a play-doh knife to carve a turkey.
So our yellow would be a much duller yellow to her, and the pure yellow would be somewhat brighter.
You are very close to correct- however the new colors are probably not that unexpected- we can approximate them by mixing colors that we can see. Imagine that the set of colors is a circle- and the set of colors we can see is an equilateral triangle inside it. There are some points near the outer edge of the circle that we cannot truly see- but we can apporximate them. A person who could see the entire circle would simply have a sharper experiance of color- but would not truly see colors that we cannot imagine.
While I will admit that the RISC/SCSI trumps the intel architecture any day, I doubt that solaris is really better than a good BSD or linux based system.
Where there may be issues with pay would be the unglamorous non-hobbylike jobs such as manning a tech support line or something. Those could either be farmed out to traditional firms or taken on as bonus pay by someone from the main group. Also emergency overtime paid for by clients could be easily tacked onto the base pay as a bonus. But voluntary long hours dont call for anything special. There should really be no set standard hours- perhaps just a weekly minimum of time spent on work related issues (30 hrs?).
Also there should be annual bonus awards- where the entire group votes on those project groups most deserving of a reward bonus. These could stand as extra incentives. the main incentive is of course the freedom. Anycoder getting base pay can work on any project he likes- so long as the main group thinks it is not total garbage. This gives an idividual freedom to do their hobby for a living. If they are ambitious they could seek out menial duties for extra pay (taking on support duties, writing docs, sysadminning) or seek sitation awards for excellence, or perhaps they could go for recognition by joining on of the steering commitees.
Oh- and besides thats a real great refutement of what I said. You can scuttle back under your rock now.
Should you live here- well then you are about to become a legal chew-toy.
Now popular defiance of copyright is prevelant here- but I dont know if its going to result in more draconian laws or a submission to reality. And our economy is so heavily copyright based, that its going to be a really hard knot to untangle fairly.
An excelltent first step would be to limit copyright to its original 14 years for any and all types of information regardless. I would even agree to let it begin Today, so that any current copyright holders would have 14 years to prepare.
Main problem is that I doesnt sound like one of those issues you can whip up a frenzy on. The main force in copyright opinion is the steady heavy hand of those who make their livings by it. They are fine with it, so they want no change.
For now we will have to settle for GPL-like licenses. Eventually the GPL may spread out from software to encompass other types of information. Maybe we will realize the copyrightless world despite the law of copyright.
I could imagine a rich philanthropist doing the world an amazing favor: Buying a content company, then exclusivly relicensing all its works as GPL-like. This would create a large initial body of work that could spawn an new economy of freedom.
Oh sure anybody could try to make derivative works based upon mine. If the story is simple and formulaic then then really dont need me. However should they really want to make a good flick for their audience, then they may well want my help.
And since they have the same set of issues I have- namely that I could write a "book" based upon one of their movies- the playing field is still fair.
Now I could easily image a writer's guild if you will- which is basically a clearing house of authors. It would make money by selling subscriptions and services. It would accept donations and support. It could charge say $5 to participate in a vote to decide which authors to keep on the tab and which to let move on.
Such a guild would only work with either GPL'd books or with no copyright laws around.
And trademarks are a law I support- that way you can easily distinguish a brand you like. However copyrights and patents hurt us more than they help us. In the long run- even the bug patent owners would benefit greatly. The only people who would be negatively affected are those who really dont do anything.
Half the english language would be under copyright- the other half patented. Even the most trivial and basic science (such as math) would be owed by some company.
Copyright and patents are a bad incentive mechanism. It serves to impede progress- not to encourage it. Our economy would suffer a temporary setback- when large publishers and studios (that produce nothing but overhead) fold, but in the long run we would all gain from it.
Creators of work would be paid by commisson, patrons, or service charges. There would be no selling of "copies", which was never a good idea to begin with.
There is really no need to guarantee a publisher money. However, there are plenty of reasons to pay authors. Getting rid of copyright cuts out the middleman.
I would refuse to provide them with the source code. So would all my competitors. Now what do they do? Answer: They buy my object code, or my competitor's object code, or go without.
Mrrrp! Wrong- they take it for free. Since you have to give away copies of your binaries for them to work, you sell one copy- then the whole world takes it for free (legally). How can you sell copies?
You try to sell subscriptions? Well one person buys a subscription then forwards copies of all binaries to anyone he knows.
Perhaps you have gotten the idea that people like to pay for things needlessly. If so I'd have a business where I resold air in invisible containers for high prices.
Pure ASP? Well GPLv2 has nothing on that either- but you cannot solve all problems via Remote Execution (Net goes down & MSWord crashes?). Besides- any single employee or security breach reveals your binaries and/or source- then the whole world gets it all for free anyway.
Summation: Without legal copy"right" protection there is no viable method of charging for copies, technological or contractual (shrinkwrapped NDA's? Nah, equates to © ).
Now as for laws providing incentives to create- Bah! way wrong. Sure everybody wants to be able to make a living- but to say that greed begets creativity is to utter a contradiction in terms. The people who are motivated primarily by laws guaranteeing them revenue are not creators- they are practical businessmen.
So what I am saying is that only "free" code would survive w/ot copyright.
Disclosure of source code does not defeat copyright law. A program has no more or less legal protection if it is released as source code or as object code only.
Thats not what I said. I said that defeat of copyright law obviates required disclosure of source code (as well as making it unenforceable).
If I write a computer program and distribute it as object-code-only, my customers are forced to come to me for upgrades and bug fixes.
Heh- who are your customers in a copyrightless world? they would probably demand the source code since the only way they would hire you to make something for them would be a one-time commision- after that they have right to do what ever they want including giving it away etc. If you put copyprotection in it, they could let the warez crowd fix that for them. It would be pointless to even try to run the scam your speak of. That only works in the world of copyright.
If you have an email or other site we could continue this argument, I would appreciate. Hotmail killed my inactive account.
The fact that someone could take source and hide it means little if anyone can take his binaries and just give them away. And there would be nothing to stop bald faced reverse engineering. And the open version would get way more development time, because way more people would have access to the code- and at no resource disadvantage.
Only if the law artificially protects people who distribute binary-only, then the mandatory relevation of source code is called for to preserve freedom.
So, the mandatory disclosure of source is simply an artifact of defeating copyright law- not an intrinsic of freedom.
It was built to hoist copyright in its own petard. It spits into the wind, to hit copyright in its own face. It is a way to tie the snake in a knot.
I'm sure RMS would actually prefer a world where there were no copyrights or patents of any sort. The comunity is about sharing- not about preserving the copyright fallacy. And a totally uninhibited world would have the same net effect as a totally GPL one.
The GPL exists in spite of copyright law- not because of it. It is a totally consistent position to champion the GPL and to regale Napster, Abandonware sharing, DeCSS, ogg, LiViD, and so forth.
The backers of copyright, invariably those who wish to turn dime on the work of others, cannot seem to understand that to defend the GPL is not the same as defending their copy"right".