[quote=“Stallman”]“For Free”
If you want to say that a program is free software, please don’t say that it is available "for free.’’ That term specifically means "for zero price.’’ Free software is a matter of freedom, not price.
Free software copies are often available for free–for example, by downloading via FTP. But free software copies are also available for a price on CD-ROMs; meanwhile, proprietary software copies are occasionally available for free in promotions, and some proprietary packages are normally available at no charge to certain users.
To avoid confusion, you can say that the program is available ``as free software.’’[/quote]
Thinking carefully about the words we use and what they mean is often a useful exercise. Your comparison of free software and child pornography is absurd and your ad hominem attacks on RMS are irrelevant.
First of all, your proposition that software is property requires special care. If software is property, then it belongs to the special class of property that is granted by copyright. Copyright is usually understood as a necessary evil–we give authors copyright to encourage them to create new works. In the case of software, this may not be necessary since programmers may create new works without the incentive of copyright protection. In fact copyrighted software seems to have a chilling effect on software innovation. We should have dozens of great new word processors intead of just one.
I am not saying that programmers should not get paid–a company well may wish to hire a programmer to create custom modifications or configure free software. But the programmer (not a software company) is being paid for the services she renders, not for the software “product”.
Secondly, copyright does allow the copyright holder to restrict others from copying the work. But it also allows the copyright holder to grant others the right to copy the work… If a copyright holder does so, then copying software is not theft. The Free Software Foundation is saying that copyright holders should grant users the right to copy software and have access to the underlying code. And this is the ethical question we are debating.
Practically speaking, the issue is whether societies are better served by using a scientific or a commercial model to manage the millions of lines of code that run behind the scenes in banks, ofices, and schools. Would hiding research results make for better science? Does hoarding code make for better software?
Discussing whether piracy ( "unauthorized copying’’ ) is right or wrong won’t make the problem go away. Something’s gonna have to change about how the industry is run to put a freeze on this. Lower prices, better products, I don’t know, somthing.
Didn’t good old Bill Gates build his empire employing “piracy” of the worst kind?
Another thing to consider are the people doing it. Is it going to be made a crime (well, I guess it is already)? Are they going to lock up 12 year olds? Will bootleggers have to go gangster like with prohibition?
What if Boeing concealed the mechanics of its planes after one crashed. The FTA investigates and Boeing says that it can’t disclose anything because it is sensitive intellectual property. Thus there is no way to make their planes safer.
Well, of course that doesn’t happen.
But now that private individuals, private companies, and top-secret government agencies now rely soooooo much on software to make the world turn round. Why should a few “copyright” holders force a black-box system on us. We are actually hostage to the security holes, back doors and non-customizable aspects of the software.
More and more companies will invest in Linux-based systems simply because they have the right to get under the hood. In this scenario, the services that will cost the company the most are SOFTWARE SERVICES and not ROYALTIES. Maybe one day Microsoft will have to compete based on service and not monopoly. Software engineers and companies will make JUST AS MUCH $$$$ as before, but the shift will be in the quality of programming services for the client (along with speed, flexibility, reliability, security, etc.). Fewer and fewer products (at least at the enterprise level) will come in shink-wrap.
I don’t think this follows at all.[/quote]
Of course it does.
If I take the time and trouble to create something, then I can do whatever I want with it. I can give it away or I can sell it or I can rent it. I can give it to my friends and sell it to people I don’t know. That’s my right as the creator of the property – whether it is “intellectual property” or something physical.
Completely false. Why do we need many word-processing programs? People want to exchange documents, and maybe modify what they’ve gotten – that is much harder if there are “dozens” of different programs out there to do it with.
Software is a “natural monopoly”. Unless there is a special need, a single tool used by everyone is the optimal outcome. Special needs might include complex chemical or mathematical formulas – this is what programs like TeX were designed for. Even so, the eventual optimal solution is to roll the functionality into the one overarching tool that everyone uses.
Oh, and why not?? Aren’t programmers worth giving royalty rights to?
Actually, no, that is the ethical question that YOU decided to debate. The rest of us were discussing whether it was right to offer links to websites that were pirating software – giving away the software that programmers and companies had decided NOT to give away freely, and NOT to allow access to the source code.
One of the failings of the open-source system is the lack of support for products. Bugs might or might not get fixed, features might or might not get added. Corporations engaged in competition in the business world, on the other hand, have a choice between fixing bugs and losing customers.
One of the failings of the market is that, because of lock-in in the software areas they have largely monopolized, Microsoft has been allowed to get away with murder as far as quality and pricing are concerned. However, with Linux invading Microsoft’s OS turf, and StarOffice starting to eat Microsoft’s “Office” lunch, this may change.
Not much. I am no fan of Gates & Co., but for the most part they created a product and sold it for what the market would bear. Their theft of STAC’s disk-compression software and their monopolistic torpedoing of Netscape and other competitors are last-ditch behaviors, not day-to-day policy.
Individual users who copy software for their own use might be forced to cough up the dough for what they used, but it’s unlikely that they’d ever be jailed. On the other claw, major piracy operations have been smashed and their perpetrators have been jailed and forced to pay restitution.
I don’t think this follows at all.[/quote]
Of course it does.
If I take the time and trouble to create something, then I can do whatever I want with it. I can give it away or I can sell it or I can rent it. I can give it to my friends and sell it to people I don’t know. That’s my right as the creator of the property – whether it is “intellectual property” or something physical.
[/quote]
It is not ‘of course’. You think that authors have natural rights in their works. I disagree. I think that society grants authors certain limited rights in their works in order to encourage them to produce more works. Copyrighting software in fact inhibits the production of more (and better) software) because it locks up code in a black box where other programmers can’t see it. Since copyrighting software serves commercial rather than social interests, it should not be allowed.
And note that you cannot “do whatever you want” with works you create at least under US copyright law. Your copyright expires after a certain period. This underlines the fact that society grants you a limited property right in some of your works. It does not magically spring into existence the moment you create your work.
Feiren, what a weird argument. Is this really the best that intellectual property thiefs can come up with to ratinalize their crime? No wonder they don’t win court cases! What a load of utter cobblers.
This sounds like rubbish, but I think it deserves further investigation. Lets say someone creates a cure for cancer (AIDS, SARS, etc.). Does that person get to charge as much many as he can to only the people that can afford treatment, or should this find be shared so it can be improved upon and made availible to everyone at a low cost? Some people are gonna says yes (he can charge) others will say no.
I think this a flaw in society that is being reflected in the software industry. Farmers around the world are barely surviving, while people are making millions on something that has an imaginary value. Software developers are very low on my list of people I feel sorry for. It’s not like people want to stop software piracy to make positive changes in the world. It’s all about making those pockets fatter.
If someone can give me an argument for stopping piracy that doesn’t have to do with the fattening of pockets, I’m all ears. Low salaries for software developers isn’t because of piracy. It’s about supply and demand (just like anything else) and piracy is in there balancing everything out. I personally do not believe that piracy affects the working class developer, and if it does stopping it is not an viable option (like I said before). Something has to change.
Sandman–What’s so weird about it? I’m arguing that we should be able to copy and distribute software freely because this would make our society a better one. Incidentally, I think it would be one where more wealth is created by private software firms that sell services rather than shrink-wrapped software.
I object to the terms you folks are using to frame this discussion:
“pirates”
“thieves”
“crime”
This is how the software industry wants you to think about proprietary software. I don’t think copying proprietary software should be a crime. I think that making it a crime is unjust. Should we always obey unjust laws?
So how would software developers make money ? If they can’t make money, why would anyone make software ?
Why not make music and films free too ?
Education is a basic right, why don’t all these English teachers teach for free ? It doesn’t take any resouces, only time.
Not publishing M$oft products in Bahasa (one of the official languages of both Indonesia and Malaysia) has been one of the greatest $hit in the nest M$soft ever conceived.
Now we have 2 nations totaling about the popuation of USA using English pirated versions of the software, thereby creating a great source of this sort of software for the whole English speaking world. Not that I would buy it of course. I hear Chinese versions are 80% cheaper in China.
It has also created an IT industry in those countries that largely speaks English, a user base that understands the English version and quite possibly would not buy Bahasa versions if they became available!
One should also consider: If it had been absolutely impossible to copy M$oft Office, would it have the market pentration it now enjoys?
[quote]Why not make music and films free too ?
[/quote]
And books. Just think how much better the world would be if books were free? And books would be so much better too, as authors would only be writing for the sheer fun of it.
Hey, let’s ask Ironlady – Ironlady, if Feiren were to steal some of your palm software, would you consider him a thief?
[quote=“matthewh”]So how would software developers make money ? If they can’t make money, why would anyone make software ?
Why not make music and films free too ?
Education is a basic right, why don’t all these English teachers teach for free ? It doesn’t take any resouces, only time.[/quote]
You would still need software developers to configure, customize, and even contribute new code to free software projects. Just as English teachers sell a service to their clients, software developers would sell their expertise to businesses.
Dieter Simader, for example, makes SQL Ledger, an accounting package, freely available. See sql-ledger.com/ While you can download the code and implement it on your own, many businesses prefer to hire an outside consultant to implement it for thier own business needs. As the author, Dieter is naturally highly in demand as a consultant.
If he can money doing that, all the best to him. Open vs Closed source software is an interesting discussion, and I can see advantages to both ways. But that does not justify selling CD-R’s from a table in Bade road. Which seems to that that is what you are condoning.
If someone makes some software that stands on it’s own and does not a consultant to make it work for you, how you expect them to get paid ? you still didn’t answer that. Or why you think books (thanks Sandman, an even better example than mine) should be free ?
"unauthorized copying’’ ) is right or wrong won’t make the problem go away. Something’s gonna have to change about how the industry is run to put a freeze on this. Lower prices, better products, I don’t know, somthing.