On Fri, Sep 05, 2003 at 04:11:19PM -0700, Bryan Murdock wrote: > Not to mention all your friends and family who are willing to "lend you > a cd" with some Windows software on it. I gave someone Open Office to > use for the semester and when I later asked if this person had tried it, > they were like, "Oh, my sister put MS-Office on there for me, so no, I > haven't." Well, I tried. I suppose I should have laid on the guilt > trip right there, but I'm not very good at that.
There is something seriously wrong with our current paradigm of computer software. It is fundamentally antagonistic and damaging to our social cohesion and to our altruistic tendencies. Someone's sister cares for a family member, and she wants to help the family member. Her natural impulse is to share her software with that person. After all, it only costs her the time and effort to lend her copy out. She just doesn't see anything wrong with doing that. In her mind, she's being helpful; she's being a good person. Those ``in the know'' immediately start talking about laying a guilt trip on this poor young lady (or her brother), because if she copies her software for the person she cares about, she's a thief and a dirty pirate! ``Bad, bad bad!!'' What kind of damage is this causing to our culture and to our sense of community? Now I'm not condoning copyright violations. After all, the Free Software movement depends on copyright protection; it is what allows software to continue to be free. What I am doing is condemning proprietary, malicious licenses that prohibit you from making copies of your software for your friends and family members. Rather than make them feel guilty, we should simply be encouraging them to accept Free Software licenses rather than proprietary licenses. Something along these lines might be appropriate: ``So you got a copy of MS Office from your friend? Did you know that that was probably a copyright violation, and that the owners of that software can audit you and press charges against you? That's okay; you didn't really know about all this, but let's make it right. There is lots of really good software out there written by people who encourage you to share it freely. Why don't you use this copy of OpenOffice instead? You don't have to worry about breaking any copyright laws or getting sued if you use it, and you can share it with your friends without being afraid of what the software authors might do to you.'' This is probably the best approach. Don't tell them that it was ``bad'' or ``wrong'' to do what they did. I would hate to be responsible for making someone feel bad and guilty for reaching out and doing what they instinctively thought was a good and altruistic thing to do. They should be rewarded for their willingness to be helpful, and then they should be steered toward using software that has a license that allows them to express these desires without any inhibitions. > > Actually, more than the "piracy" interpretation, I lean towards the "He > > just didn't know what the heck he was talking about" interpretation. ;-) > > This was my general impression from the whole article. Did any of them > know that much about what they were talking about? Well, this Sylvie Alvarez girl seems to be on a techno trip: http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/45402 Something tells me that she is going to be BYU's greatest source of misinformation for the next little while with regards to computer technology. :-) Mike -- ------------------------------------------- | --------------------- Michael Halcrow | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Developer, IBM Linux Technology Center | | What's another word for synonym? | ------------------------------------------- | --------------------- GnuPG Keyprint: 05B5 08A8 713A 64C1 D35D 2371 2D3C FDDA 3EB6 601D
pgp00000.pgp
Description: PGP signature
____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
