pouët.net

I am with psonice at this point. I will most certainly make my software free and even open source when the hype around it dies and after I milk the cow so that I can feed myself et al. It's what John Carmack does and I quite like it as can be seen from the Quake series. But before that, nope.

I have had a lot of discussions about free software. The main thing I noticed is that people who oppose free software always get into a position that people who promote free software are not developed enough to see the obvious things, as if they do not live on the same planet and absolutely don't know how software distribution works. But in reality free software movement did not appear just like that. I am usually sad not because people do not agree - that's fine - but because most people do not even try to understand. They just find ways to say that the idea sucks and free software is a dumb unrealistic idea. But it is not a random philosophy, it is very well thought out and it is not possible to rule it out in a couple of days in a forum.

I do not agree on your arguments, especially that quality software should have all features which people might want. I am using sequencers and dj tools for years and there are always features I need for my work flow which will never be implemented. The other thing is that nowadays nobody even thinks about asking developers, because everybody knows it doesn't work like that.

You always speak about income. Income is important and I don't know what are your examples, but my experience shows that making a living with free software is easy and possible. No need to make up illusionary problems of generating a living. Problems with aforementioned methods are not as big as forcing people to not share with each other, putting innocent people under trial, calling almost everyone in the world pirates and trying to control every computer in the world.

But to me the biggest value of free software is that it respects people's freedom and benefits community. If we do not agree on that main premise, I believe there is no way you will be "for" free software. Because free software is about freedom and community - it comes to that. It's not about - "what will I get", "what will it give me?" It's about - "how can I help", "how can we all protect our freedoms"? I know many people here said they don't care about their freedom in software. Well... what can I say? Nothing to argue and discuss here. Simply different philosophical positions.

Ignoring the rest of your post for the moment, but this doesn't make sense. If the law of the country they live in is not to "share" music/software/whatever, and they still do, they're not innocent, but they have broken the law. They might not agree with said law, but that doesn't magically make it okay to break it.

innocent from positions of common ethics, I would say. That law does not equal to ethics is obvious (I hope). If you obey the law and betray your friend, you are not innocent. At least, this is what I believe in.

you mean, your very personal ethics- fanboi.

well, if helping my friend is my personal ethics only, then yes.

louigi: i'm not suggesting that the idea of free software is dumb or unrealistic, just that it has it's place among all the other ways of distributing stuff. I can tell you with certainty that if I made my software free, my income would be almost nothing, and I'd stop making stuff. I like doing it, but I need the money too, and people are happy to pay for my work. For some projects (like the apache example I gave), it fits perfectly, and I'd be pretty angry if they suddenly made it closed + charged money.

The rest of what you wrote there doesn't make much sense.. as stijn says, if people are breaking laws, they will go to jail. The law says that people can have physical property, and intellectual property, and that stealing either is a crime. It says that copying somebody's IP is stealing. That's so that when somebody puts years of work and lot of their own money into creating something, they can get that effort back, and not have somebody just copy it freely.

Yeah, there's a ton of problems with that method, but on the whole it works, and where it doesn't you can usually get around it. You don't like music with DRM? Don't buy it. You think the photoshop license isn't fair when you can't give your friend a copy? Write your own paint tool. This is freedom, you can do what you want on the whole, so long as it's not harming somebody else. Forcing somebody else to give their work away when they don't want to isn't freedom at all.

Well, this I can say with a 100% certainty - neither am I, not the free software movement is not forcing anyone.

As for what you say about law, maybe I am a different person, but I look at law as an editable medium. If law says something I think is wrong, I will speak about it and try to do something to change it. I will not say - well the law says so, so it must be correct.

As for hard work and copying freely, we've talked about it and I am amazed we came back to this once again. Feels like I did all that writing for nothing.

I'm not saying it is correct. I'm saying it is the law. You're more than free to speak up if you disagree with it, and use the political system to change it. But until it is changed, it is the law, and if you break it there will be consequences. Don't like the law? Change it, which might take a while, or go live somewhere else.

bullshit, read the GNU GPL.

Not everybody uses the GPL, or even agrees with it... you know?

well it was directed at him, he has quoted Stallman on every single account, so now when I put GPL here I am not representing the majority according to him, but when he quotes Stallman it is okay? ... *sigh*

No, law really IS without ethics or morals. I had a very interresting talk with a fairly high ranking lawyer here in DK. I can't remember how we got there, but at some point i argue :"But that is utterly immoral, isn't law supposed to be just?" to which the old guy answered "young man, don't you dare polute the waters with all these meaningless words of philosphy, the meaning of law is what the law says it is"

I was gobsmacked. there are no filter, even in fairly developed countries such as my own, that prevent bullshit laws made for special interrest groups being passed upon the rest of us.

Law reflects what agreements has been made to get there, not justice, not fairness, not equality or ethics. Law is what the law says it is, and if the law is that you should kill your neighbour that would then be a moral action (abiding by the law), but it says nothing about whether it is right to kill your neighbour (ethics) nor does it ever even want to go there.

From what I understood the best way to operate a law that eventually will be fair for most, is to make it as impersonal and computer like as possible.

Decipher:

Nobody forces you to use the GPL for anything. If you release code on your own, you're certainly free to choose whatever license you wish and there are free software licenses the FSF recognizes other than the GPL. If, on the other hand you are talking about using someone else's project that is under the GPL, he or them are not forcing you to use the work, you always have a choice. Comparing proprietary to the GPL, the only difference is you have MORE rights and basically the only right you lack is to take those rights from others.

WW2 Germany is the extreme (and because of that pretty much agreeable for everyone) example of why it isn't so obvious innocence is just staying within the limits of the law.