🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <39F9664A.8AF3067E@my-deja.com>,
  Angus McBastard <angusmcb@my-deja.com> wrote:
> 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
>

Please understand, I really *do* sympathise with you over the problems
associated with bad software, and I would like to see the law
strengthened in the related areas to prevent such 'rip-offs' occurring
and giivng power back to consumers to insist that corrections are made
when software is not fit for purpose.  But I still must maintain that
all that can be achieved, without removing fundamental rights of people
not to have their work copied and used by others for their gain, if
they so wish.

If people want to provide the source code of their creations then that
is fine - I have no problem with that, but if they don't then that is
their right and you should not be able to take away that right - just
don't use the software if you find the conditions unacceptable.


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