Music artists put a lot of time and effort into producing a work of art which they then allow the general public to enjoy. That is the important point here - they allow the public to listen to.
Oh, hogwash. Musicians have no right to prevent anyone from hearing their music. They are not graciously allowing other people to hear their music - in fact, any real artist would like every human being on the planet to hear their work.
As it is their work, they decide how they want people to obtain and use said work,
No. If Band X said that only brown-eyed blondes were allowed to obtain and use said work, we'd laugh at them.
Even under today's copyright law, artists have no legal power to decide how people use and obtain their work, other than preventing unauthorized copies and collecting performance royalties. I can play recordings of their songs for my friends, I can perform their work in public or private, I can buy and sell used recordings.
There's no natural right to control what other people do with your work. (Except perhaps the right to be prevent someone else from claiming to have created it.) Artists have only the artifical "intellectual property" legal rights granted to them by legislatures on behalf of "we the people". And "we the people" are deciding that granting an artificial right to prevent copying doesn't make sense anymore.
and anyone that believes otherwise is just condoning theft in one of its many forms.
Copying by its very nature is not and cannot be theft. Theft takes something away from the victim. If I make a copy, you still have the original.
If anything, this action is a lot more soft than it could have been considering the sums of money which have been lost to the hordes of Napster pirates.
Pirate? Where? I didn't know that the folks at Napster even had a boat.
Oh, I see, you're using "pirate" in the incorrect and prejudicial sense of "one who makes an unauthorized copy". How in the world the same term should apply to copying as to murder, rape, and theft on the high seas is beyond me.
So, anyway, you say that money has been lost from the artists to the folks at Napster? Did Napster come and rob their piggy banks? No? So if the musicians still have all the money they had before, how was money lost?
The only think that might have been lost were potential profits. Well, guess what - potentials change. You don't have a moral right to stuff that you could have had if circumstances had been different.
But considering that CD sales are up, it's hard to even argue that potential profits were lost.
There's a world of difference between quoting from the Bible and leading a prayer! If you don't think so, consider if I were to give a speech at your kids school and I either include a quote from Anton LeVay, or I lead a ritual prayer to Satan.
(Not, for the record, that I'm a Satanist. I had to explain that just a few days ago to a guy who saw my pentacle earring and didn't know the difference between Paganism and Satanism.)
I would love to join the ACLU, but not until they stop their bigoted prejudices against people of faith....If she wants to quote the New Testament, they would have her for dinner.
Hogwash! I challenge you to cite a case where the ACLU has proceeded along these lines.
The ACLU has been at the forefront of defending student's expression of religious beliefs; for example, in one recent case a school banned wearing of the Star of David because - and I'm not making this up - they classified it as a gang symbol! The ACLU fought and won for a Jewish student's right to wear the symbol of his faith.
On the other hand, if that Star of David were to be displayed by the school as a religious expression, the ACLU would (quite rightly) object.
The War on Drugs has continued for some 20 years, and we see little prospect of peace, despite the fact that it has totally failed and given the US an imprisonment rate almost equal to Russia.
Has Russia's been locking people up like mad since the fall of the USSR? I know that in the early 90's, we had the highest prison population in the world, both in raw numbers and per capita - and that was with only a bit over one million people in jail. We're now at about two million people behind bars.
I have to agree with RMS about the possibility of a "War on Copying" - in fact I used that very phrase just a few days ago in another discussion. And I'd anticipate that strong anti-copying laws would be even less effective that the anti-drug laws that are violated by about thirty million Americans per year.
When you steal a candy bar do you deprive anyone of a candy bar? No, in today's mechanized society there is effectively an infinite supply of candy bars.
Wrong. Maybe someday completely automatic machines will make candy bars out of thin air, like Star Trek's replicators (maybe nanotechnology), but today if I steal a candy bar, the store is down one candy bar. To restore the original state of affairs, labor and natural resources are required - somebody has to order the bar, somebody has to make the bar, somebody has to stock the shelves.
If I copy a piece of music, the artist is at a miniumum in the same position he was in pre-copy. If I like the music, he's gained in reputation, which will likely get him paid in some manner.
All you have deprived someone of is their right to be compensated for the work put into making that candy bar.
Unless there's some prior agreement, you have no natural right to be compensated for your work. For example, you can't come over, cut my lawn, and then charge me for it, unless we had a deal first.
Even under copyright, a creator has no guarantee of being compensated for the work they put in. Unless they have a commission, writers and musicians create first and hope that people will like their music and compensate them for it - that's true with or without copyright. The difference, post-copyright, is in how they will be compensated.
Our economy as much about labor as it is about labor.
I wish! But, we live in a capitalist economy. If our economy were based on labor, people who actually did productive work would be the ones who got rich, not owners and speculators.
What do you think "Copyright" means? Literally it means "the right to copy." Withotu contro lof that right an author can have no value from his or her work,
See, that's where you go wrong - assuming that a state granted monopoly on copies is the only way for artists to get paid. Look around, dammit! People who copy songs still buy CDs when they want to support the artist.
Audiences aren't stupid. People know that if they don't support an artist, the artist can't produce the works that they like.
They will find ways to support artists. But a pay-per-copy scheme isn't the way to do that - it's always had ethical and practical problems, and now it simply cannot be enforced anymore. (Unless, perhaps, you're willing to go for police-state tactics, in which case we can have a violent "War on MP3s" to join our failed and counterproductive "War on Drugs".)
We need to stop propping up a dying copyright system and create new ways of encouraging "the progress of science and useful arts".
But I stand by my full statement that when you copy and trade that copy, you are stealing.
So we're agreed that if I borrow a CD from a friend and rip a copy for myself, that's not stealing, since there's no trade involved. Right?
listened to a friend play a song (off a recording, or on their guitar) at a party
My friends don't charge me to listen. I don't know about yours.
That was rather my point. (Although I have seen friends play at venues that charged a cover, so in a sense they were charging me to listen.) I get to enjoy the songwriter's creation without having "earned" anything, and no one says that's a problem; so arguing that I didn't "earn" the right to get a copy of a recording doesn't wash.
Another convienent paraphrase. If he copies the song you write, and sold that piece, you are down the revenue you should have received by that sale.
If he sells it, then I might be entitled to a cut. But if he gives it away, who's to say that there should have been revenue? If I'm playing music in a bar that's charging a dollar a head to get in, and someone charges seventy-five cents to get you in the back door, yeah, I want a cut. But if you're standing outside on a public street listening to the music come through the open window I have no claim that you owe me a buck.
Jon Katz is a socialist, pure and simple, and his views of redistributing property in the name of the betterment of mankind are flawed.
I have no idea whether Katz is a socialist or not, but ignorant criticism of socialism "burns my goat".
In its broadest sense, "socialism" just means an economic system based on labor, rather than on capital - it means seeing that property is a human invention, meant to promote human liberty (for without private property, there can be no private decisions) and happiness. When it becomes destructive of those ends, perhaps a change in defintions - "redistribution" - is indeed in order.
"Redistributing property" sits at the basis of capitalism, too - find me a piece of property that isn't based on a government definition, on taking something from one party and granting it to another. It's just that capitalism has tended to make one-time grants, then allowed the favored owners to trade. Almost every bit of land and natural resources in the US was stolen from the Indian nations (who, of course, occasionally used to steal it from each other too) by the European or American governments, and most of it assigned to private hands.
"Intellectual" property is even more purely a state creation - there's no natural right to prevent others from making copies. It's a concept that was introduced to promote liberty and freedom, and it's now no longer appropriate for those ends (if it ever was).
Face facts, people. Unless you have the permission of the artists and their publishers, the music you share on Napster is stolen.
Face facts, people: copying is not stealing. If you steal something from me you deprive me of its use - I no longer have it. If you copy a song I write and record, I still "have" the song as much as I ever did.
but that ignores the fact that the artists make their living from selling their art.
Fine. It's just time to find a better way for artists to get paid than a mandatory pay-per-copy scheme - it's always been ethically questionable, and with the advent of digital media it's completely impractical.
Before you free software fanatics out there start bitching about freedom (as in liberty), think how you would react to someone violating the GPL when it comes to distribution of the software?
When you COPY someone else's intellectual property, and trade (or even give away) that property without the creator's permission, you are STEALING it.
Copying information is not stealing, and putting it in all caps won't make it so.
You are profiting from somebody else's work when you engage in piracy.
Piracy is robbery and murder on the high seas, not the making of unauthorized copies.
You did not earn the fruits that are beared when you trade your copied music with somebody else.
I didn't "earn" the fruits I enjoyed when I read that borrowed book, or listened to a friend play a song (off a recording, or on their guitar) at a party. But no one expects me to pay the author when I memorize (copy into my brain) a poem from a library book.
This is as if Comrade Katz himself showed up to your work on pay day and took your paycheck and handed it to some charity of his choice.
No, it's not. I would then be down some money. If he copies a song I write and record, I'm down nothing. I may even gain in reputation, which could allow me to make some money in some manner other than a state backed pay-per-copy scheme.
Thank you! Someone with a clue at last. Why do so many people fail to see the obvious here? You download pirated MP3's, you break the law. There's no wriggling out of that fact.
So what? Said law is now outdated and irrelevant; there's no wriggling out of that fact.
We break the law all the time. My crimes include speeding and other traffic violation, underage drinking, violation of open container laws, forbidden consensual sexual activities, and even blasphemy (yes, the laws are still on the books here in Maryland). I'm sure there are others that I don't even know I'm commiting, since I don't have the entire legal code memorized. (I do think that ignorance of the law should be an excuse, when the law is bloated, volumous, and obfuscated such that no citizen can fully know it...but I digress.)
There's nothing sacred about the law; anyone who thinks otherwise would have made a fine slave catcher.
Say you write some code, GPL it, and release it on the 'Net. Everyone can download it for free, use it, according to the provisions of the license, correct? Now, let's say that someone takes your code and uses it and releases a binary-only version of their software.
Ok. Now, presumably they're doing this in order to sell their binary-only software, right? After all, if you're giving away a program, there's no reason not to include the code. (Companies giving away free-beer programs today generally also have a pay version built from the same code base. Either that, or they've got something to hide and ought not to be trusted.)
But, before you get a chance, let's say that some turkey writes a program that enables anyone to transfer this obviously illegal material to anyone else in the worldinstantaneously, furthering the 'theft' of your ideas, per se. You'd be pretty fscking pissed, right?
No, I'd be laughing my ass off at the Cosmic Justice of it all. Some bad person tried to take my ideas and make something that they could keep for themselves, but your "turkey"'s program has prevented them from doing so.
The GPL is a response to copyright, a defense against the use of copyright to hinder your rights to use, copy, and modify software. Remove copyright, and the need for the GPL pretty much goes away - without copyright, no one can step on your right to use or share software, and social pressure and market forces will be sufficient to keep the code open and defend your right to modify it.
Well, personally, I like the idea that people can make a living as songwriters and performers (even if I probably never will...).
So do I. (Although post-copyright I suspect that fewer people will be able to do so, while more people will be able to write or perform as a part-time job or lucrative hobby.) But a pay-per-copy model isn't the way to do it.
One could liken that to making money touring, but the sad fact is that we live in a world dominated by MTV, oppressive record contracts, and an attatchment to a flavor of the week, so far as music goes. None of that bodes well for artists touring...
So, let's change the world, by giving every musician the power to distribute his work to the world and every listener the power to share the music they like!
The prevailing mentality around here is one which completely devalues artists. If you enjoy their work you should be paying them for it. It's that simple. Otherwise you're just saying "you're worthless".
Nonsense. The mentality around here just says that the model for supporting artists shouldn't be state enforced pay-per-copy.
If I like the guy playing at the bar, I put a buck or two in his tip jar. He doesn't come around and demand a nickel from me before he plays each song.
I love bringing this argument up... People constantly flame companies for "sharing" the changes they've made to GPLed products without complying fully with the license by releasing the source to their modifications, yet it's completely fine with the same group of people to "share" the music they have even when they have no right to share it.
These companies want to "share" their changes only to the extend of making me pay for a copy - then if I then tried to share that copy, they'd be all over me. That's hypocracy.
It's always been recognized as ok to share music by performing it; now that recordings can be so easily shared, we need to realize that making a copy of a song you like for a friend is as natural as singing it for them. Making a copy should be viewed like performance - which is free for non-commercial personal, even if you're performing in front of a hundred people, but requires a royalty if you're making money off it.
1 - the FSF is in violation of the GPL by distributing on CD-ROM GPL-ed software at substantially more than the physical cost of duplicating...
No no no no no. There is absolutely nothing in the GPL that prevents you from charging for software. (Section 1 of Terms and Conditions: "You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy".) You just can't charge those people who buy the software for the source, at least beyond cost of duplication. (Section 3b: "to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code".)
Please do yourself a favor and go educate yourself a little bit about world religions before spouting such ignorant and prejudiced crap. Let me suggest Huston Smith's The Religions of Man as a starting point.
There are plenty of Muslim and Buddhist scientists and engineers out there. Yes, there are also those who are ignorant and fearful about science, but one can say the same about Chrsitians, Jews, Hindus, Pagans, and atheists.
Because of Mr. Newton (and to a limited degree Mr. Einstein), the chances of a collision with the Earth during this fly by were approximately 0% (to any degree of precision you choose).
...Assuming, that is, that everyone calculated everything properly. With recent failures on the Mars probes, I'd be much more wary of something going up today than I was during the Cassini launch and fly-by.
There's an interesting analysis of the Cassini Environmental Impact Statement here. I'd take it with a grain of salt, but I'd take NASA's statements on the risks the same way. (Check out pre-Challenger estimates of risk on the Shuttle, for example.)
At the average State U, the average student is just that-average. Being surrounded by other students who really give a shit makes a huge difference in the quality of your education, and that is something that a big State U just can't provide.
At the big State U I attended (University of Maryland, College Park), we had a University Honors Program that surrounded you with other bright people. I think more most large universities have something similar.
You know, that exact shtick is what my guidance counselors in high school were telling me about the University of Maryland versus MIT. "Why, oh why, do you set your sights on MIT, when UMCP is good enough? MIT is soooo expensive, and soooo out of your reach."...Don't allow yourself (or others) to be held back by the notion that state schools are just as good as the Ivy League schools. They aren't.
Hmmm, well, let me stand up for good old UMCP here...
When I was considering colleges I considered MIT (breifly, before I realized I'd be miserable any farther north than I am, I can't stand cold weather), Caltech, or JHU; but I have absolutely no regrets about the time I spent at UMCP. I even stuck around to get my MS.
When I was a junior there, a high school friend of mine who'd gone to JHU transferred to UMCP. He said the UMCP program was much better, and about a tenth the cost. (An impression that's been confirmed by two friends of mine with engineering degrees from JHU.) So don't beleive that just because you're paying more, you're necessarily getting more.
Are there things that I would have learned at MIT that I didn't learn at UMCP? Possibly. (OTOH, my studies of non-technical fields may have been stronger at UMCP.) Are there things that I would have learned at MIT that I can't learn on my own, given the foundation I got at UMCP? Doubtful.
Now, I wouldn't let anyone tell you that such-and-such school is out of your reach. OTOH, just because you could afford something somehow doesn't mean it's the best buy. (I could afford the payments on a new Ferrari, but my little green Toyota is much more sensible.) It's really, really nice not to have to deal with student loans.
Well, guess what, I think I've gotten my money's worth (well, my parents' money's worth).
Well, it's quite different when it's someone else's money, isn't it?
I have not taken any classes at MIT that are taught by grad students (the recitation sections are sometimes taught by grad students, but that's normal).
The only classes at UMCP I ever had that were taught by grad students were acting, piano, and weight training; I don't really think these were a negative impact on my academic progress. B-)
...in the real world, if you want to manipulate a typewriter, you have to bring it into focus (pick it up and sit in front of it) before you can interact with it. Although that doesnt make much sense to a geek, the perfect user-interface would be the one that makes the most sense to someone with no preconceived notions about how computers work.
In the real world, I can write on a piece of paper that's sticking out from under another piece without pulling it to the top, and without tapping it with my pencil first to make it the recipient of my writing. GUI windows that claim to implement a "desktop" metaphor should work the same way.
The mouse should serve as a device for manipulating the screen and icons, whereas the keyboard is for manipulating text.
Most of us select text with the mouse. Using the mouse to manipulate that selection is not only more convenient but more sensible.
Reducing it to its titlebar makes a lot more sense then sending it off to a taskbar.... it makes more sense to shrink a window in its current position and regrow it in the same place then it does to send it all the way to the opposite end of the screen
I disagree. It breaks the whole desktop metaphor - when I want to remove a piece of paper from my workspace, I don't fold it up and leave it sitting there, I move it off the desk.
If you're going to have a metaphor, stick with it as much as possible. That's consistency, in a more important sense than whether a menu item is called "Customize" or "Options" or whatever.
Without copyright, everybody is selling my binary-only modifications. Ok, what's my incentive to make better software?
Old school: you want better software yourself. Scratch the itch; then you might as well share your work and get recognition and respect.
People have, and always will, write programs (and songs, and stories, and poems) without getting paid to do so.
New-school: in addition to the above, you could be hired to write an open-source application, or you could write a custom job on contract. See CoSource or SourceExchange for two models of how you can get paid to write free software.
Many large and interesting software projects being written today could be open sourced without much economic impact, because they're custom-made. For example, my current contract is hacking for TRW on EDOS, a NASA project. Giving NASA the source wouldn't really make a difference, since they're expected to be the only user. (Heck, they might be getting it now - I'm just the hired help, I don't know the details.)
There are also secondary ways to make a buck. You can sell support, manuals, and the like; and I think that in the future we'll actually see mechandizing and endorsements start to play a role. Hell, if Microsoft can sell a "Windows 95" blend of coffee (I'm not making this up), why not "Jolt: Official Cola of Red Hat Linux"?
Bringing the issue back to music -- suppose I write a great song, Warner Brothers tapes it and has their flavor-of-the-month artist record her own version. I stayed up late many nights working on that song, but WB can afford to package it and make more money when their artist tours. They get income from concerts, t-shirts, and nicely-packaged CDs. I get ZERO.
Which is why I've been saying that while making and giving away copies should be unrestricted, selling copies or other profit-making off a work might require that a royalty be paid to the author. I think that song performance royalties are a good model to start from - I can perform any song anywhere (as if anyone could stop me), but if I'm getting paid I (really the venue owner, usually) owe the artist a cut via BMI or ASCAP.
But strictly, that's not a copyright issue, since anyone would still have the right to make copies of the work. We're talking about something new, a "salesright" if you will, which is more practical and more ethically palatable.
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Cool! I can ignore the GPL now! I'm going to make changes to fetchmail and sell it WITHOUT SOURCE.
Post-copyright, what reasonable motivation would you have to do so? The only reason to keep your source secret is so you can sell binaries - those who are giving away sourceless binaries today (e.g., Be) still have for-sale binaries based on the code base.
But post-copyright, selling binaries makes no sense. One guy gets your modified fetchmail, and it's available for free to the world from his FTP server an hour later. Your monetary gain: $0.
People who understand free software (which, we hope, will soon be everyone) are pissed at you, and wonder what dastardly code you're hiding. Your reputation gain: mucho minus.
The purpose of the GPL is to protect our ability to use, distribute, and modify software. The only threats to the first two are the copyright laws themselves, so removing them doesn't harm the GPL in that way. Social pressure and market forces will suffice to preserve the third.
You would still be charged with destroying evidence.
What evidence? I value my privacy and had the thing rigged to blow in case of theft, so the thief couldn't read my old love letters. How was I, innocent law-abiding citizen (snicker snicker) that I am, to know that my computer would be seized by black-clad stormtroopers of the Copyright Office, apparently acting on bad information?
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Even under today's copyright law, artists have no legal power to decide how people use and obtain their work, other than preventing unauthorized copies and collecting performance royalties. I can play recordings of their songs for my friends, I can perform their work in public or private, I can buy and sell used recordings.
There's no natural right to control what other people do with your work. (Except perhaps the right to be prevent someone else from claiming to have created it.) Artists have only the artifical "intellectual property" legal rights granted to them by legislatures on behalf of "we the people". And "we the people" are deciding that granting an artificial right to prevent copying doesn't make sense anymore.
Copying by its very nature is not and cannot be theft. Theft takes something away from the victim. If I make a copy, you still have the original. Pirate? Where? I didn't know that the folks at Napster even had a boat.Oh, I see, you're using "pirate" in the incorrect and prejudicial sense of "one who makes an unauthorized copy". How in the world the same term should apply to copying as to murder, rape, and theft on the high seas is beyond me.
So, anyway, you say that money has been lost from the artists to the folks at Napster? Did Napster come and rob their piggy banks? No? So if the musicians still have all the money they had before, how was money lost?
The only think that might have been lost were potential profits. Well, guess what - potentials change. You don't have a moral right to stuff that you could have had if circumstances had been different.
But considering that CD sales are up, it's hard to even argue that potential profits were lost.
(Not, for the record, that I'm a Satanist. I had to explain that just a few days ago to a guy who saw my pentacle earring and didn't know the difference between Paganism and Satanism.)
The ACLU has been at the forefront of defending student's expression of religious beliefs; for example, in one recent case a school banned wearing of the Star of David because - and I'm not making this up - they classified it as a gang symbol! The ACLU fought and won for a Jewish student's right to wear the symbol of his faith.
On the other hand, if that Star of David were to be displayed by the school as a religious expression, the ACLU would (quite rightly) object.
I have to agree with RMS about the possibility of a "War on Copying" - in fact I used that very phrase just a few days ago in another discussion. And I'd anticipate that strong anti-copying laws would be even less effective that the anti-drug laws that are violated by about thirty million Americans per year.
If I copy a piece of music, the artist is at a miniumum in the same position he was in pre-copy. If I like the music, he's gained in reputation, which will likely get him paid in some manner.
Unless there's some prior agreement, you have no natural right to be compensated for your work. For example, you can't come over, cut my lawn, and then charge me for it, unless we had a deal first.Even under copyright, a creator has no guarantee of being compensated for the work they put in. Unless they have a commission, writers and musicians create first and hope that people will like their music and compensate them for it - that's true with or without copyright. The difference, post-copyright, is in how they will be compensated.
I wish! But, we live in a capitalist economy. If our economy were based on labor, people who actually did productive work would be the ones who got rich, not owners and speculators. See, that's where you go wrong - assuming that a state granted monopoly on copies is the only way for artists to get paid. Look around, dammit! People who copy songs still buy CDs when they want to support the artist.Audiences aren't stupid. People know that if they don't support an artist, the artist can't produce the works that they like.
They will find ways to support artists. But a pay-per-copy scheme isn't the way to do that - it's always had ethical and practical problems, and now it simply cannot be enforced anymore. (Unless, perhaps, you're willing to go for police-state tactics, in which case we can have a violent "War on MP3s" to join our failed and counterproductive "War on Drugs".)
We need to stop propping up a dying copyright system and create new ways of encouraging "the progress of science and useful arts".
In its broadest sense, "socialism" just means an economic system based on labor, rather than on capital - it means seeing that property is a human invention, meant to promote human liberty (for without private property, there can be no private decisions) and happiness. When it becomes destructive of those ends, perhaps a change in defintions - "redistribution" - is indeed in order.
"Redistributing property" sits at the basis of capitalism, too - find me a piece of property that isn't based on a government definition, on taking something from one party and granting it to another. It's just that capitalism has tended to make one-time grants, then allowed the favored owners to trade. Almost every bit of land and natural resources in the US was stolen from the Indian nations (who, of course, occasionally used to steal it from each other too) by the European or American governments, and most of it assigned to private hands.
"Intellectual" property is even more purely a state creation - there's no natural right to prevent others from making copies. It's a concept that was introduced to promote liberty and freedom, and it's now no longer appropriate for those ends (if it ever was).
We break the law all the time. My crimes include speeding and other traffic violation, underage drinking, violation of open container laws, forbidden consensual sexual activities, and even blasphemy (yes, the laws are still on the books here in Maryland). I'm sure there are others that I don't even know I'm commiting, since I don't have the entire legal code memorized. (I do think that ignorance of the law should be an excuse, when the law is bloated, volumous, and obfuscated such that no citizen can fully know it...but I digress.)
There's nothing sacred about the law; anyone who thinks otherwise would have made a fine slave catcher.
Ok. Now, presumably they're doing this in order to sell their binary-only software, right? After all, if you're giving away a program, there's no reason not to include the code. (Companies giving away free-beer programs today generally also have a pay version built from the same code base. Either that, or they've got something to hide and ought not to be trusted.)
No, I'd be laughing my ass off at the Cosmic Justice of it all. Some bad person tried to take my ideas and make something that they could keep for themselves, but your "turkey"'s program has prevented them from doing so.The GPL is a response to copyright, a defense against the use of copyright to hinder your rights to use, copy, and modify software. Remove copyright, and the need for the GPL pretty much goes away - without copyright, no one can step on your right to use or share software, and social pressure and market forces will be sufficient to keep the code open and defend your right to modify it.
If I like the guy playing at the bar, I put a buck or two in his tip jar. He doesn't come around and demand a nickel from me before he plays each song.
These companies want to "share" their changes only to the extend of making me pay for a copy - then if I then tried to share that copy, they'd be all over me. That's hypocracy.It's always been recognized as ok to share music by performing it; now that recordings can be so easily shared, we need to realize that making a copy of a song you like for a friend is as natural as singing it for them. Making a copy should be viewed like performance - which is free for non-commercial personal, even if you're performing in front of a hundred people, but requires a royalty if you're making money off it.
No no no no no. There is absolutely nothing in the GPL that prevents you from charging for software. (Section 1 of Terms and Conditions: "You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy".) You just can't charge those people who buy the software for the source, at least beyond cost of duplication. (Section 3b: "to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code".)
Please do yourself a favor and go educate yourself a little bit about world religions before spouting such ignorant and prejudiced crap. Let me suggest Huston Smith's The Religions of Man as a starting point.
There are plenty of Muslim and Buddhist scientists and engineers out there. Yes, there are also those who are ignorant and fearful about science, but one can say the same about Chrsitians, Jews, Hindus, Pagans, and atheists.
There's an interesting analysis of the Cassini Environmental Impact Statement here. I'd take it with a grain of salt, but I'd take NASA's statements on the risks the same way. (Check out pre-Challenger estimates of risk on the Shuttle, for example.)
When I was considering colleges I considered MIT (breifly, before I realized I'd be miserable any farther north than I am, I can't stand cold weather), Caltech, or JHU; but I have absolutely no regrets about the time I spent at UMCP. I even stuck around to get my MS.
When I was a junior there, a high school friend of mine who'd gone to JHU transferred to UMCP. He said the UMCP program was much better, and about a tenth the cost. (An impression that's been confirmed by two friends of mine with engineering degrees from JHU.) So don't beleive that just because you're paying more, you're necessarily getting more.
Are there things that I would have learned at MIT that I didn't learn at UMCP? Possibly. (OTOH, my studies of non-technical fields may have been stronger at UMCP.) Are there things that I would have learned at MIT that I can't learn on my own, given the foundation I got at UMCP? Doubtful.
Now, I wouldn't let anyone tell you that such-and-such school is out of your reach. OTOH, just because you could afford something somehow doesn't mean it's the best buy. (I could afford the payments on a new Ferrari, but my little green Toyota is much more sensible.) It's really, really nice not to have to deal with student loans.
Well, it's quite different when it's someone else's money, isn't it? The only classes at UMCP I ever had that were taught by grad students were acting, piano, and weight training; I don't really think these were a negative impact on my academic progress. B-)If you're going to have a metaphor, stick with it as much as possible. That's consistency, in a more important sense than whether a menu item is called "Customize" or "Options" or whatever.
People have, and always will, write programs (and songs, and stories, and poems) without getting paid to do so.
New-school: in addition to the above, you could be hired to write an open-source application, or you could write a custom job on contract. See CoSource or SourceExchange for two models of how you can get paid to write free software.
Many large and interesting software projects being written today could be open sourced without much economic impact, because they're custom-made. For example, my current contract is hacking for TRW on EDOS, a NASA project. Giving NASA the source wouldn't really make a difference, since they're expected to be the only user. (Heck, they might be getting it now - I'm just the hired help, I don't know the details.)
There are also secondary ways to make a buck. You can sell support, manuals, and the like; and I think that in the future we'll actually see mechandizing and endorsements start to play a role. Hell, if Microsoft can sell a "Windows 95" blend of coffee (I'm not making this up), why not "Jolt: Official Cola of Red Hat Linux"?
Which is why I've been saying that while making and giving away copies should be unrestricted, selling copies or other profit-making off a work might require that a royalty be paid to the author. I think that song performance royalties are a good model to start from - I can perform any song anywhere (as if anyone could stop me), but if I'm getting paid I (really the venue owner, usually) owe the artist a cut via BMI or ASCAP.
But strictly, that's not a copyright issue, since anyone would still have the right to make copies of the work. We're talking about something new, a "salesright" if you will, which is more practical and more ethically palatable.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Post-copyright, what reasonable motivation would you have to do so? The only reason to keep your source secret is so you can sell binaries - those who are giving away sourceless binaries today (e.g., Be) still have for-sale binaries based on the code base.
But post-copyright, selling binaries makes no sense. One guy gets your modified fetchmail, and it's available for free to the world from his FTP server an hour later. Your monetary gain: $0.
People who understand free software (which, we hope, will soon be everyone) are pissed at you, and wonder what dastardly code you're hiding. Your reputation gain: mucho minus.
The purpose of the GPL is to protect our ability to use, distribute, and modify software. The only threats to the first two are the copyright laws themselves, so removing them doesn't harm the GPL in that way. Social pressure and market forces will suffice to preserve the third.
(IMHO, of course; RMS may disagree.)