Mahesh T. Pai wrote:
Sriharsha Vedurmudi said on Fri, Sep 24, 2004 at 12:16:31PM +0530,:
among the vast majority of non-software companies who are interested in using a popular software, if it is free. Now, dont you think that cheating such a company is easy? Honestly, one can mutate a program
You are wrong here. You have a very wrong notion of the community.
I did earlier, but Joe Steeve in his last mail cleared all my doubts. I think you have not read the subsequent posts, you can find them in our archieves at: http://mm.gnu.org.in/pipermail/fsf-friends/2004-September/date.html if you did not receive the mails. As far as I am concerned, if a question is answered or a doubt is clarified, there is no need for other good samaritans to dig out the question from older mail and re-answer it, unless the answer already given is incorrect and/or adds ambiguity. So, kindly refrain from it.
(atleast the C source code is in plain ASCII?) and then take the CD to that company saying he/she has downloaded that software and install it (and the company feels happy that their time and money is saved from getting used for downloading it, esp. if its large).
Mr. L. User, the boss here, deserves the sysadmin he has.
The sysadmin deserves the software he gets.
You can verify by compiling the sources yourselves, which you
cannot with non-free software. Not even if it is opensource, like the way M$ has offerred the UK government the other day.
If you would have read my mails/posts properly, I again-and-again said that I was talking specifically about many small-time NON-COMPUTER related firms who would'nt have a Full-Time Administrator also. DONT EXPECT MOST OF THEM TO BE WISE ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND CONCEPTS OF FREE SOFTWARE, COMPILATIONS, DIGITAL CERTIFICATES JUST LIKE YOU DO. Maybe they are few in number when compared to others, but they still exist. All they use computers is for simplifying (if possible) their works and entertainment. Now, if you say, I DONT CARE ABOUT SUCH PEOPLE and OFFICES, LET THEM GO TO HELL, well, I resign from trying to put forth my point.
(and I say so after having witnessed disasters caused by similar methods). My point here was that apart from
Ah. A /disaster/? Can I have details? Please ask the master mind behind the disaster to give the full source code to his modifications. If you are sure that the guy who modified was acting with malicious motives, why did you not take appropriate action??
Are you going to compensate for the losses incurred? A few hundreds or thousands may look like peanuts to you, but not to everyone. Do you expect that the mastermind will bring his mutated code for your kind perusal and dance and make merry when you discover that it is not original? Coming to why I did not take action, I got in touch with them after the damage was done. Ofcourse the problem was solved.
-Harsha.