🚀 go-pugleaf

seajays@my-deja.com wrote:
> 
> In article <39F9535C.3BD8B15A@my-deja.com>,
>   Angus McBastard <angusmcb@my-deja.com> wrote:

> > In this analogy the source code is the song and the object code is the
> > recording. You buy a licence to play music in public for profit, but
> no
> > one can stop you singing the song to yourself. With a music recording,
> > you get the "source code" with the product. This is patently not the
> > case with proprietary, closed-source software
> >
> 
> Your singing the song to yourself is likely to be a rather poor copy of
> it - and you probably won't profit from it either.  If you do make
> money from it, then the artist gets a cut.  The 'source code' may be
> available but you can't use it.
> 


I don't suppose Smithers-Jones could use the SAP/R3 source in his
business either, but his techs could.

This point doesn't wash against a programmer who is also a decent
musician :)

[snip-o-rama]

> 
> It is your right to sell the product of your work - just check my
> previous references to the universal declaration of human rights.
> 
> If you don't like the terms you don't have to use the software.  Just
> because you don't like the terms doesn't mean you have a right to use
> the work without permission.  Simply use someone elses software who is
> providing the source code, as that's what you feel you need.  You can
> do this without impinging on my right not to give my work to you for
> nothing.
> 

You can only take caveat emptor so far..
Nobody is asking you to give up bugger-all except your assumed "right"
to rip off the consumer (You as a software behemoth, of course).

Put it this way I for one have never done a commission job for anyone
anywhere, that didn't involve the source ending up in the hands of the
customer, anything else would be just outrageous.  


But strange when focus is shifted to software for general consumption,
(where in fact the average customer couldn't use the source (for that
read song!) anyway) that software companies are allowed to fraudulently
pass off software unfit for consumption and with no guarantees for
fitness of use whatsoever, then use the very unfitness of their products
to justify expensive *cough* "support" to workaround their own bad
designs and thereby rip-off the consumer even more.


Proprietary software distorts the market to such an extent that entities
like M$ can exist to distort it even further using corporate power:- and
everybody, including you, friend are the loser. Free Software implies
only that you sell a complete, working product, and not a
semi-functional part of the whole


Angus

-- 
It said WinNT 4.0 or better on the box.
So I installed Linux.