On Wednesday 18 July 2001 19:57, Tushar Burman wrote:
----- Original Message -----
But wait... I need to pay the phone bill, the rent, the electricity, the LSD/Ecstasy etc.
So I sell it. I'm sure I'd need some sort of license to release it. Realistically, it simply MUST have some restrictions on what the user can do with it. If he's able to legally just give it to another friend, I don't make money.
You have the wrong business model. You are trying to sell a product to as many people as possible while simultaneously trying to prevent them from using it as they deem fit (which includes copying). One can assemble a motorbike with spares from the market - duly modified to kickass. There is a niche market for this. But if it does not kickass (or i prevent others from further customising) no body will buy it. Those who do not need the high performance will buy a standard model from abc & co. Why? cause it is cheaper than the one i assemble using spares - not because of fancy laws. All arguments regarding costs / economics put up by the software cos are a lot of hot air. In fact the automobile industry faces a whole lot of laws protecting the consumer and spends far more on their products. This is the exact opposite of the software industry. The same goes for any industry. You can buy a pc from an assembler or IBM. Would a law preventing people from buying any machine other than IBM be justified. A business built on artificially erected barriers designed to protect the minority is doomed to failure. As expertise grows in society premium goods aquire a commodity characteristics. Businesses then need customers to uniquely identify their products from those of competitors - BRANDING and the accompanying marketing baggage. Laws that prevent growth of and disbursement of knowledge within society so that only a few may benefit has no place in any society.
Not too many people would be willing to make those sacrifices and even if they are willing, might not be in a position to do so.
One need not be a hermit. But one need not be unprincipled either. Make your own value system and live by that.
Duplicating currency is another interesting industry having properties similiar to software and monopolised by the government. A responsible government does not need to print (create) and publish currency (software) as it can meet it's needs by judiciously utilising resources that enables users to create value. (called economic growth) Governments less responsible will tax (charge) arbitarily & print and publish when ever they need money, effectively diluting the worth of it's users. Govts do this under the guise of providing you great new services (.net) amongst other lofty ideals. In India and other countries with less responsible govt. we would be justified in duplicating money (in an attempt to reflect it's actual worth) but prevented by law which protects the government monopoly. So how do you protect the value of your money? By converting into a more stable and valuable currency say $ (GNU-Linux). But this is illegal. Why? as the people migrate to $ the Rs. will become more worthless and the $ more valuable. Who looses? The irresponsible government ofcourse. So govt. builds legal barriers and use the FERA (copyright) to nail the smart ones and call them smugglers, antinationals etc (viral, antiamerican etc.) and spreads FUD to con the ignorant. If the money is worthless nobody will use it, even the government. The government will now borrow $ (free BSD?) and sell it to you in Rs at a fat premium. At the same time they prevent you from borrowing (preventing OEMs from loading another OS) or converting (using your doc and xls files). The end result crashes, instability, suffering. Why? because of laws preventing freeflow of (intellectual) capital and equal rights.
The GPL tries to prevent the above state of affairs by allowing you the option of walking in the direction you please. You can migrate to any software. You can preserve the value of your work without paying fat premiums. You have access to the same resources as the fatcats. It prevents the fatcats from putting up barriers for others.