hi,
Moinak Ghosh wrote on Thu, Sep 19, 2002 at 12:49:46PM +0530:
mg> Even though I share your views, I can't help but point out one flaw
mg> in your line of reasoning with a car. If you buy a car you can do
mg> anything with it, even sell it. However in case of a video or cd you can
mg> also make multiple copies of it and sell them while still retaining the
mg> original - this is called piracy. You are profiting out of someone else's
mg> efforts. Can you do this with a car ? No. If give your car to your neighbor
The manufacture of each car takes up necessary amount of labour, skill
and material and charges only for all that he invests "per car" (of
course with a little profit margin). However with softwares[/music], the
amount of efforts put forth for developing a piece of software is
irrespective of the number of users OR the number of copies that are
going to be made for one software (barring the copying/distribution
costs). But software vendors greedily charge for _every_ "copy" of their
software. That is where, IMHO, software should be free from such
licenses which prevent you from sharing.
Even more vulnerable are users when they start signing EULAs which
restrict the use of softwares for specific purposes. Its like saying:
"You can drive this car only on Anna salai", though you pay the same
money to buy the car, you are restricted from using it for whatever
purpose that you wanted to use it for. Evil isn't it?
At this situation the user who has the money to buy each copy buys it.
Those who dont, start thinking of "doing without it". When the number of
users for a software is less, there is lesser number of feedback that
the developer is going to get from the user and hence lesser bugs fixed.
This worsen the situation for those who bought the software and they end
up living with unfixed bugs and vulnerabilities although they paid for
it.
The free software business model aims at solving such issues by creating
an open market for softwares:
http://www.panix.com/~kingdon/writings/bizmod.html ;
I'm reposting the above URL because it seems relevant to what I'm
talking here.
RMS's talks at MIT, Chromepet, Chennai:
http://www.chennailug.org/rms-chennai.txt
(Recorded tapes of the speech are available with me. email me in private
for more details [recording done free of cost]. I would also be glad if
someone with a Cd-Writer would be willing to let me plug in my hard-disk
into their machine and burn the OGGs of the speech onto a CD-ROM).
Thanks,
-Suraj
--
+----------------------------------------------<suraj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>--+
| Those who follow the light of nobility, live |
| in fame that survives the world |
| (prayer - 3), Thirukkural |
+--<http://www.symonds.net/~suraj/>------------------------------------+
