From: "Michael O'Keefe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
If we didn't have copyright to allow the author to control how people use
their work, then in our business (F/OSS), the M$'s of the world (and their
not the ONLY ones) would sit back, take the best ideas, copy them verbatim
into their own work, without even giving due credit, and sell it (which, in
of itself isn't a crime) without letting others learn from them, just like
they learned from you.
And we could then just take their program and copy it as much as we wanted,
leaving them with no real benefits from doing so, but a lot of problems
(keeping the code in sync with bug fixes in disparate architectures is not
easy). Not optimal, but I could live with this. Althpough I would not be
opposed to laws saying you must give proper attribution.
I'd much rather have them reigned in than allow a free for all.
As I've said, most F/OSS developers have a "day-job" that they can fall
back to to afford to give their "art" away. But the majority of artists
have to sell it, and need a marketplace in which to sell into. Which there
wouldn't be without copyright protections stopping 1 person buying it, and
then wholesale copying and selling take place.
It worked for hundreds of years without copyrights. I don't see it suddenly
failing now.
I'm not against very short term copyrights to provide a short term profit
motive, but the key is just that- short term. If you haven't made a profit
in 3-5 years, you aren't ever going to. And a short term would provide
incentive for them to keep producing, rather than allowing them to live off
past works.
Gabe
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