I've tried to ask P2Pers why they do it. "Cuz it's FREE dude" They don't care about evil corporations or even understand that they are robbing someone of their profits. I've yet to meet anyone that was file sharing as an act of defiance.
Most people have no understanding of copyright at all. They can't respect something they don't really understand.
The average person doesn't understand what a copyright is. It's too abstract. A CD or a book is something they can physically hold. To them they think they own the book not a "COPY" of the book. Stealing a book is easy to understand and visualize. Stealing potential profits that one has a limited right (sic) to is something that is harder for people to understand or care about.
If they can't see and touch it they don't care. Many people bitch and moan about ATM fees because they can see that $2 charge taken away from them right at the time of withdrawal. Yet they don't realize that the amount of taxes a person has withheld on a paycheck is really double. They don't see so they don't understand it or they don't care.
They don't understand the difference between a constitutionally granted right and a constitutionally protected right. Copyrights are granted rights. Free speech and the right to bear arms are protected rights.
Despite the Slashdot wish that this was a grand showing of defiance against the evil corporations most people don't understand about that and don't care.
Maybe I just not with the flow but I tend to call Linux by the distro name not Linux. I don't run Linux. I run RedHat, Mandrake, or SuSE. Each is Linux, they are very much alike, yet very different as well. Throw Slack or Debian in to the mix and it is very different birds.
Not that most people care, since they don't even bother to vote, right?"
I don't vote because I don't believe that my vote is part of an honest vote. My vote has been stolen some time ago. We have crooked elections in this country, have had for years, and we lost our vote to fraud years ago. I'm not going to waste my time in a sham show election. I'm more a less a Bush supporter but I think he stole the election. It think Gore tried to steal it. They all try to fix elections. Corporate money long ago ruined our republic. The only vote that counts is the vote of the greenback.
Why are the policos ignoring this? Because they WANT it not to work. How else can they rig it? A paper and a pencil is the only ballot I'll ever trust and I REFUSE to vote if I can't use them. Anything else is an insult.
It is bad enough driving with everyone and his ass talking on cell phones and not paying proper attention to the road. Now some geek will run my ass over while he is trying to hack my server.
Well thank the gods that will not happen. Even a 20% bond would cost a couple of BILLION dollars and an actual injunction would send the NASDAQ crashing through floor and the basement and deep into the bedrock.:-)
If the case had merit could they not get someone to underwrite the bond(Hello LLOYD'S of London)? Not the case here of course, but they are allowed to do that are they not?
The rules depend on what state and sometimes what county, parish, district, whatever...you are in. I live in Texas. All ballots are locked in a ballot box and taken, often by sheriff's deputies, to the county court house. Note in Texas the Sheriff is an elected official often on the ballot his men or hauling in.
Your joke made me laugh. But the sad thing is that it is the whole point of voting machines.
A paper ballot and a pen is the only form of ballot I trust. And if they don't count the ballots AT THE POLLING PLACE in plain view of the public BEFORE they ship them off to the court house you can't trust the result.
Paper ballot boxes get tampered with all the time. A machine that most people couldn't understand is NOT going to make voting less prone to fraud. If I can't take apart the machanical voting machine to see if it works correctly and I can't look at the code of a computer program and see if it works correctly then why SHOULD I trust it?
We allready had a major election full of obvious vote fraud(On both sides. Bush was just better at it THIS TIME. Gore was just as crooked just not as effective.) Voting machines are just one more way to cloud the issue. A voting shell game run by slick con men.
DEMAND paper ballots! Demand that votes be counted and posted AT THE POLL. Any thing else is a sham!
Parnet post: What will will do for businesses putting redhat on the desktop in regard to the RedHat trademark? Are they going to have to pay for it online, or will they drop all the trademark stuff for RedHat Linux?
Now I wasn't sure exactly what his point was unless he was refering to selling copies of Red Hat to clients of giving copies of Red Hat to clients as part of the service of mantaining it. Why would two friends copying software have anything to worry about Trademarks? Someone SELLING software does have to worry about trademarks.
Part of my comments: Let say I copy a RH disk and it is botched and sell it to my buddy John.
I said SELL the disk. I was only refering to SELLing the disk. Note RED HAT considers professionals who install copies of Red Hat to clients as SELLING copies of their disks. If they hear that you do that they will ask you not to. I know I was.
Except for you friend to friend coping it forbids copies of Red Hat. If you market Red Hat in any way you can't use copies that you yourself produce. (Unless you remove the RedHat logos from the code) See: http://www.redhat.com/about/corporate/trademark/gu idelines/page6.html
Ask www.linuxiso.org about Red Hat's trademark policy. You get a earful.
http://www.linuxiso.org/news.php#87
I'm not trying to make Red Hat look bad. This is what THEY ask of people that copy their disks. Try to find a copy of Red Hat at cheapbytes? You will not. You get Pink Tie. It is RH9 without the logos or the words Red Hat on the disk or in the code.
Technically no one can sell copies of RedHat. They are Nazi's about their trademarks so they will not allow a copy of a disk to say Red Hat or allow the code to contain the words Red Hat or the shadowman logos. Cheapbytes sells "Pink Tie" which is Red Hat after you remove all the logos and other trademarked items in the code. So is it really Red Hat?
It is only a bad move if they stop offering it preinstalled on your computer. If I can't go to Best Buy and get a new E-machine preinstalled with Red Hat complete with a restore disk because I'm too stupid to know how to reinstall it....Oh wait....
Most computer users wouldn't know or even understand what Red Hat is. Those that do will download it or get it in a book or from a fellow geek friend. I never have purchased a copy of any Linux.
Red Hat was wasting money, cardboard, and CDs on very little return.
Will you be able to buy CDs from Best Buy? NO. Will you be able to get CDs(not ISOs real CDs mailed to you) from RedHat.com? Yes. Will you still be able to download ISOs from RedHat? Unknown. Possibly not. They may do a SuSE here. (Never understood why Linux dealers offered ISOs.)
Red Hat is becoming rather harsh on anyone that copies their disks. Technically your not allowed to replicate a Red Hat disk unless you go into the code and remove all the trademarks. No logos, no use of the words "Red Hat" in the code. You can't print lables with RED HAT or the shaddowman logo on the disk.
How this is supposed to be legal in face of the GPL is questionable. Any trademark onwer has a right to prevent you from replicating a trademark. For Example: I can't print up Coca-a-cola tee shirts with out getting premission from Coke, even if it would be free advertising for Coke. But at the same time the code, right down to the parts of the code that produces the logos and other trademarks is GPL'd. The trademark itself isn't GPL'd but the code is. So can I repoduce it or not? RedHat says I can't but I'm not sure that they can legally ask this of anyone. And no one that has been asked by RedHat not to do so has had the guts and/or money to fight them in court over it.
Frankly I can see and even agree with RedHat's POV on this. Let say I copy a RH disk and it is botched and sell it to my buddy John. John has trouble installing or using it and therefore he thinks RedHat is junk. It's not RH that produced this it was me. I gave him junk but it is RH that gets the bad reputation. Worse say I put a trojan on his RH disks. As a company the ONLY real asset RedHat has is its good name of which the trademark is a reminder of. I can't blame them for being Nazis about protecting it.
That Amemdment has allways been a weird one to me. I never understood the point of first half. It doesn't define what a Militia is nor defines who gets to regulate it. It appears to be there as a reason to justify the second half which is very clear. No infringement. Of course we haven't been free since the War between the States. If a country founded on seperation can't allow the same to happen to it then it doesn't respect freedom.
Seems to me that a private company incorporated in an equatorial third-world country would be better situated than any company in the U.S. I don't see why U.S. citizens cannot own a stake in a foreign enterprise of this type.
Because the US doesn't want it's citizens to fund, indirectly, some third world nation's ICBM program?
It's no different with any other license -- that's the _whole_point_ of a license. Microsoft's license isn't any different. Nor are IBM's or Oracles or whomever elses. If you want to be completely free of restrictions, you can release your code to the public domain _without_ copyright.
Yep they are all a bit of force. You exercise some force in any license. I can't just do ANYTHING with the code. I can't claim it as mine or resell it if your using a commerical license. Even the BSD has some restrictions.
Absolutely not. The GPL doesn't prevent people from charging money for such a project. If you want to, you can go, right now, download the jSyncManager, and sell it to whomever you want, for however much money you want. The only requirement on you as a redistributor is that you provide the source to anyone who asks. RedHat and every other commercial Linux distribution does just this.
Yep and how many just download the free copy? Selling free software is a joke. You can sell support but not all programs need support. Honestly I've never understood why a distro like RH offers it's ISOs for download. Yes the programs are all free but the work of assembling a distro ought to be worth something. Yes someone can just copy your disk and defeat that but why make it easy? Also RH guards it's trademarks very closely. Technically you can't copy a RH disk unless you remove the logos and trademarks and you can't call it RedHat. Your free to copy the programs, even the way they are assembled on the disk but you can 't call it RH. But I digress.
Certainly. All that you have to ensure is that you either own the full copyright to every bit of code you're licensing to them...
Well that gives you some protection and some control. Makes those who code by themselves have some real control over their code. Groups would have trouble doing this unless they transfered their rights. I notice that GNU does this to protect its copyrights. You want to contribute to the offical code you gotta sign your rights to the group.
There isn't anything to really force anyone to do anything. If someone doesn't like the way I license my software, they are simply free to not use it.
There we have to agree to disagree. That is a My way or the highway attitude, which to me is force all be it a slight force.
What I _do_ want to prevent is someone (like Microsoft) from taking my hard work, and using it to make _their_ products work, without having to give anything back to me. This is the difficulty you run into with the BSD-style licenses. For some things, this can work quite well (Ogg Vorbis is BSD-style licensed, for example, as they want their standard adopted by the widest possible audience. In this sense, what they're really marketing is their format and algorithm, with their encoding/decoding software simply being the implementational detail), but for others, you've not only given everyone the rights to your recipe, you've basically given them the ability to use that recipe to their own advantage, without having to give anything back.
Ah yes, it's the "if I can't make a buck you can't either. situation.":-) Well If that is the case then can Microsoft contact you, the copyright holder, and make a private deal based on new code? I.E. you grant them a different license because as the orignal copyright holder you can issue other licenses?
Ok so what your saying is that the copyright holder and ONLY the copyright holder has the right to NOT contribute a modification to his program under the GPL because he is not bound by his own license.(Makes sense. One does not need to license oneself the rights to one's own program.) Anybody else though IS required to do so because the only reason they have any rights at all is because of the GPL.
Ok well that is a slight plus in favor of the GPL. I personally don't think the GPL promotes freedom. One has to have the right to use a program anyway he wants. REQUIRING anyone to do anything is not freedom it is force. But RMS is a communist and that is the way they think. Personally if I were a programer and I was inclined to do open source then I'd use BSD style. It's honest because you have to site your sources and it is free because you can do anything you want with the code.
Secondly, even though I'm giving it away for free, I still (and will always) own my code. My name is in all of the copyright statements, and the code is protected by copyright legislation both in my own country (Canada) and abroad. I have all the rights anyone else does that produces copyrightable materials. I can change the license at any time.
I'm not a programer nor a lawyer so forgive me if I make a stupid/incorrect statemnet. Does this not depend on what license you use to begin with? If you GPL are you not required to provide the source to anyone you distributed it to? And aren't you required to GPL any changes that you distribute publicly(even if you only distribute in exchange for cash.)
If I write program FOO 0.1 and copyright and GPL it makes changes all the way up to 0.9 and on 1.0 decide to take it to a Microsoft like EULA how does that override the requirements to GPL it. And how does that stop those who get my code from giving it away free? And worse what if back around 0.5 somebody forks my code and produces FOOBAR. GPL is one license you can't change. Your code is permanantly tatooed with it.
There is a difference between the basics and advanced topics. Knowing that a gigabyte is a messurement of filesize and not speed is basic. Knowing exactly how much data IS a gigabyte is advanced. Most people know that horsepower is a messurement of power but ask them do set up a demostation of the use of 1 horsepower is beyound most everyone's ability. But they do know that the bigger the number the faster it goes.
I don't find many people that would confuse 10w40 motor oil with a spark plug. But most people wouldn't know a hard drive if they tripped over one. They should.
People are just plain lazy. Thank you public education and TV. The adverage person doesn't need a technical understanding of horsepower to know that the higher the horsepower rating the faster the car goes. Most people don't know the math and physics envolved and most don't need to. The same thing applies to tech terms. I find many people that confuse megabyte and megahertz. Most people can tell you the basic difference between a transmition and a engine yet most people can't tell the difference between memory and hard drive space. This ISN'T rocket science it just NEW.
Hey your preaching to the choir here. I agree that is how it SHOULD be but effectively it is stealing. A copyright holder has the right to control how it's copied and he has the law on his side. Should he have that right is another question. One that most P2P'ers don't have a clue about or frankly give a shit about from my observation.
Most people I've know that do P2P, not counting the computer geeks, don't even know what the RIAA is. Nor do they care that the RIAA is ripping people off. They just know that they can download a song they like for FREE. They don't understand or care that it is stealing or if they do they figure it is a victimless crime because they don't have to faceoff a shopkeeper while trying to shove a CD down their pant leg.
Slashdot Mirror
I've tried to ask P2Pers why they do it. "Cuz it's FREE dude" They don't care about evil corporations or even understand that they are robbing someone of their profits. I've yet to meet anyone that was file sharing as an act of defiance.
Most people have no understanding of copyright at all. They can't respect something they don't really understand.
The average person doesn't understand what a copyright is. It's too abstract. A CD or a book is something they can physically hold. To them they think they own the book not a "COPY" of the book. Stealing a book is easy to understand and visualize. Stealing potential profits that one has a limited right (sic) to is something that is harder for people to understand or care about.
If they can't see and touch it they don't care. Many people bitch and moan about ATM fees because they can see that $2 charge taken away from them right at the time of withdrawal. Yet they don't realize that the amount of taxes a person has withheld on a paycheck is really double. They don't see so they don't understand it or they don't care.
They don't understand the difference between a constitutionally granted right and a constitutionally protected right. Copyrights are granted rights. Free speech and the right to bear arms are protected rights.
Despite the Slashdot wish that this was a grand showing of defiance against the evil corporations most people don't understand about that and don't care.
Maybe I just not with the flow but I tend to call Linux by the distro name not Linux. I don't run Linux. I run RedHat, Mandrake, or SuSE. Each is Linux, they are very much alike, yet very different as well. Throw Slack or Debian in to the mix and it is very different birds.
...tradition of dueling to solve disagreements? Sounds like a great way for lawyers who disagree to resolve disputes to me. Dontyathink?
Not that most people care, since they don't even bother to vote, right?"
I don't vote because I don't believe that my vote is part of an honest vote. My vote has been stolen some time ago. We have crooked elections in this country, have had for years, and we lost our vote to fraud years ago. I'm not going to waste my time in a sham show election. I'm more a less a Bush supporter but I think he stole the election. It think Gore tried to steal it. They all try to fix elections. Corporate money long ago ruined our republic. The only vote that counts is the vote of the greenback.
Why are the policos ignoring this? Because they WANT it not to work. How else can they rig it? A paper and a pencil is the only ballot I'll ever trust and I REFUSE to vote if I can't use them. Anything else is an insult.
It is bad enough driving with everyone and his ass talking on cell phones and not paying proper attention to the road. Now some geek will run my ass over while he is trying to hack my server.
Well thank the gods that will not happen. Even a 20% bond would cost a couple of BILLION dollars and an actual injunction would send the NASDAQ crashing through floor and the basement and deep into the bedrock. :-)
If the case had merit could they not get someone to underwrite the bond(Hello LLOYD'S of London)? Not the case here of course, but they are allowed to do that are they not?
The rules depend on what state and sometimes what county, parish, district, whatever...you are in. I live in Texas. All ballots are locked in a ballot box and taken, often by sheriff's deputies, to the county court house. Note in Texas the Sheriff is an elected official often on the ballot his men or hauling in.
Your joke made me laugh. But the sad thing is that it is the whole point of voting machines.
A paper ballot and a pen is the only form of ballot I trust. And if they don't count the ballots AT THE POLLING PLACE in plain view of the public BEFORE they ship them off to the court house you can't trust the result.
Paper ballot boxes get tampered with all the time. A machine that most people couldn't understand is NOT going to make voting less prone to fraud. If I can't take apart the machanical voting machine to see if it works correctly and I can't look at the code of a computer program and see if it works correctly then why SHOULD I trust it?
We allready had a major election full of obvious vote fraud(On both sides. Bush was just better at it THIS TIME. Gore was just as crooked just not as effective.) Voting machines are just one more way to cloud the issue. A voting shell game run by slick con men.
DEMAND paper ballots! Demand that votes be counted and posted AT THE POLL. Any thing else is a sham!
Parnet post:
/ gu idelines/page8.html
u idelines/page6.html
What will will do for businesses putting redhat on the desktop in regard to the RedHat trademark? Are they going to have to pay for it online, or will they drop all the trademark stuff for RedHat Linux?
Now I wasn't sure exactly what his point was unless he was refering to selling copies of Red Hat to clients of giving copies of Red Hat to clients as part of the service of mantaining it. Why would two friends copying software have anything to worry about Trademarks? Someone SELLING software does have to worry about trademarks.
Part of my comments:
Let say I copy a RH disk and it is botched and sell it to my buddy John.
I said SELL the disk. I was only refering to SELLing the disk. Note RED HAT considers professionals who install copies of Red Hat to clients as SELLING copies of their disks. If they hear that you do that they will ask you not to. I know I was.
http://www.redhat.com/about/corporate/trademark
Except for you friend to friend coping it forbids copies of Red Hat. If you market Red Hat in any way you can't use copies that you yourself produce. (Unless you remove the RedHat logos from the code) See: http://www.redhat.com/about/corporate/trademark/g
Ask www.linuxiso.org about Red Hat's trademark policy. You get a earful.
http://www.linuxiso.org/news.php#87
I'm not trying to make Red Hat look bad. This is what THEY ask of people that copy their disks. Try to find a copy of Red Hat at cheapbytes? You will not. You get Pink Tie. It is RH9 without the logos or the words Red Hat on the disk or in the code.
MOD PARENT TROLL!
Technically no one can sell copies of RedHat. They are Nazi's about their trademarks so they will not allow a copy of a disk to say Red Hat or allow the code to contain the words Red Hat or the shadowman logos. Cheapbytes sells "Pink Tie" which is Red Hat after you remove all the logos and other trademarked items in the code. So is it really Red Hat?
What I would like to see them do is to sell hardcopies of books and manuals.
http://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/books.html
It is only a bad move if they stop offering it preinstalled on your computer. If I can't go to Best Buy and get a new E-machine preinstalled with Red Hat complete with a restore disk because I'm too stupid to know how to reinstall it....Oh wait....
Most computer users wouldn't know or even understand what Red Hat is. Those that do will download it or get it in a book or from a fellow geek friend. I never have purchased a copy of any Linux.
Red Hat was wasting money, cardboard, and CDs on very little return.
Will you be able to buy CDs from Best Buy? NO.
Will you be able to get CDs(not ISOs real CDs mailed to you) from RedHat.com? Yes.
Will you still be able to download ISOs from RedHat? Unknown. Possibly not. They may do a SuSE here. (Never understood why Linux dealers offered ISOs.)
Red Hat is becoming rather harsh on anyone that copies their disks. Technically your not allowed to replicate a Red Hat disk unless you go into the code and remove all the trademarks. No logos, no use of the words "Red Hat" in the code. You can't print lables with RED HAT or the shaddowman logo on the disk.
How this is supposed to be legal in face of the GPL is questionable. Any trademark onwer has a right to prevent you from replicating a trademark. For Example: I can't print up Coca-a-cola tee shirts with out getting premission from Coke, even if it would be free advertising for Coke. But at the same time the code, right down to the parts of the code that produces the logos and other trademarks is GPL'd. The trademark itself isn't GPL'd but the code is. So can I repoduce it or not? RedHat says I can't but I'm not sure that they can legally ask this of anyone. And no one that has been asked by RedHat not to do so has had the guts and/or money to fight them in court over it.
Frankly I can see and even agree with RedHat's POV on this. Let say I copy a RH disk and it is botched and sell it to my buddy John. John has trouble installing or using it and therefore he thinks RedHat is junk. It's not RH that produced this it was me. I gave him junk but it is RH that gets the bad reputation. Worse say I put a trojan on his RH disks. As a company the ONLY real asset RedHat has is its good name of which the trademark is a reminder of. I can't blame them for being Nazis about protecting it.
That Amemdment has allways been a weird one to me. I never understood the point of first half. It doesn't define what a Militia is nor defines who gets to regulate it. It appears to be there as a reason to justify the second half which is very clear. No infringement. Of course we haven't been free since the War between the States. If a country founded on seperation can't allow the same to happen to it then it doesn't respect freedom.
Seems to me that a private company incorporated in an equatorial third-world country would be better situated than any company in the U.S. I don't see why U.S. citizens cannot own a stake in a foreign enterprise of this type.
Because the US doesn't want it's citizens to fund, indirectly, some third world nation's ICBM program?
It's no different with any other license -- that's the _whole_point_ of a license. Microsoft's license isn't any different. Nor are IBM's or Oracles or whomever elses. If you want to be completely free of restrictions, you can release your code to the public domain _without_ copyright.
Yep they are all a bit of force. You exercise some force in any license. I can't just do ANYTHING with the code. I can't claim it as mine or resell it if your using a commerical license. Even the BSD has some restrictions.
Absolutely not. The GPL doesn't prevent people from charging money for such a project. If you want to, you can go, right now, download the jSyncManager, and sell it to whomever you want, for however much money you want. The only requirement on you as a redistributor is that you provide the source to anyone who asks. RedHat and every other commercial Linux distribution does just this.
Yep and how many just download the free copy? Selling free software is a joke. You can sell support but not all programs need support. Honestly I've never understood why a distro like RH offers it's ISOs for download. Yes the programs are all free but the work of assembling a distro ought to be worth something. Yes someone can just copy your disk and defeat that but why make it easy? Also RH guards it's trademarks very closely. Technically you can't copy a RH disk unless you remove the logos and trademarks and you can't call it RedHat. Your free to copy the programs, even the way they are assembled on the disk but you can 't call it RH. But I digress.
Certainly. All that you have to ensure is that you either own the full copyright to every bit of code you're licensing to them...
Well that gives you some protection and some control. Makes those who code by themselves have some real control over their code. Groups would have trouble doing this unless they transfered their rights. I notice that GNU does this to protect its copyrights. You want to contribute to the offical code you gotta sign your rights to the group.
There isn't anything to really force anyone to do anything. If someone doesn't like the way I license my software, they are simply free to not use it.
:-) Well If that is the case then can Microsoft contact you, the copyright holder, and make a private deal based on new code? I.E. you grant them a different license because as the orignal copyright holder you can issue other licenses?
There we have to agree to disagree. That is a My way or the highway attitude, which to me is force all be it a slight force.
What I _do_ want to prevent is someone (like Microsoft) from taking my hard work, and using it to make _their_ products work, without having to give anything back to me. This is the difficulty you run into with the BSD-style licenses. For some things, this can work quite well (Ogg Vorbis is BSD-style licensed, for example, as they want their standard adopted by the widest possible audience. In this sense, what they're really marketing is their format and algorithm, with their encoding/decoding software simply being the implementational detail), but for others, you've not only given everyone the rights to your recipe, you've basically given them the ability to use that recipe to their own advantage, without having to give anything back.
Ah yes, it's the "if I can't make a buck you can't either. situation."
Ok so what your saying is that the copyright holder and ONLY the copyright holder has the right to NOT contribute a modification to his program under the GPL because he is not bound by his own license.(Makes sense. One does not need to license oneself the rights to one's own program.) Anybody else though IS required to do so because the only reason they have any rights at all is because of the GPL.
Ok well that is a slight plus in favor of the GPL. I personally don't think the GPL promotes freedom. One has to have the right to use a program anyway he wants. REQUIRING anyone to do anything is not freedom it is force. But RMS is a communist and that is the way they think. Personally if I were a programer and I was inclined to do open source then I'd use BSD style. It's honest because you have to site your sources and it is free because you can do anything you want with the code.
Thanks for clearing this up for me.
Secondly, even though I'm giving it away for free, I still (and will always) own my code. My name is in all of the copyright statements, and the code is protected by copyright legislation both in my own country (Canada) and abroad. I have all the rights anyone else does that produces copyrightable materials. I can change the license at any time.
I'm not a programer nor a lawyer so forgive me if I make a stupid/incorrect statemnet. Does this not depend on what license you use to begin with? If you GPL are you not required to provide the source to anyone you distributed it to? And aren't you required to GPL any changes that you distribute publicly(even if you only distribute in exchange for cash.)
If I write program FOO 0.1 and copyright and GPL it makes changes all the way up to 0.9 and on 1.0 decide to take it to a Microsoft like EULA how does that override the requirements to GPL it. And how does that stop those who get my code from giving it away free? And worse what if back around 0.5 somebody forks my code and produces FOOBAR. GPL is one license you can't change. Your code is permanantly tatooed with it.
There is a difference between the basics and advanced topics. Knowing that a gigabyte is a messurement of filesize and not speed is basic. Knowing exactly how much data IS a gigabyte is advanced. Most people know that horsepower is a messurement of power but ask them do set up a demostation of the use of 1 horsepower is beyound most everyone's ability. But they do know that the bigger the number the faster it goes.
I don't find many people that would confuse 10w40 motor oil with a spark plug. But most people wouldn't know a hard drive if they tripped over one. They should.
People are just plain lazy. Thank you public education and TV. The adverage person doesn't need a technical understanding of horsepower to know that the higher the horsepower rating the faster the car goes. Most people don't know the math and physics envolved and most don't need to. The same thing applies to tech terms. I find many people that confuse megabyte and megahertz. Most people can tell you the basic difference between a transmition and a engine yet most people can't tell the difference between memory and hard drive space. This ISN'T rocket science it just NEW.
Hey your preaching to the choir here. I agree that is how it SHOULD be but effectively it is stealing. A copyright holder has the right to control how it's copied and he has the law on his side. Should he have that right is another question. One that most P2P'ers don't have a clue about or frankly give a shit about from my observation.
Most people I've know that do P2P, not counting the computer geeks, don't even know what the RIAA is. Nor do they care that the RIAA is ripping people off. They just know that they can download a song they like for FREE. They don't understand or care that it is stealing or if they do they figure it is a victimless crime because they don't have to faceoff a shopkeeper while trying to shove a CD down their pant leg.