🚀 go-pugleaf

Jason Clifford <jason@dlsl.demon.co.uk> writes:

> In article <yq3ogrvc6kb.fsf_-_@nasrullah.tchden.org>, Louis B. Moore
> <moore.louis@childrens.tchden.org> writes
> >> work by those people if it is to be of value. They are NOT paid prior to
> >> its sale and, usually, the price of an individual copy would not pay for
> >> its development.
> >
> >Hmm. No code I've written has ever been sold, but my various employer's
> >checks have cleared the bank since 1981.
> 
> You were paid for writing that code weren't you? 

Precisely. I was paid to integrate various things into a working whole.
Some of the code was released to the Public Domain, most of it was
too specific to the Hospital to be useful in a general sense.

You do not have to write shrink wrapped code to be a programmer. 

Limiting access to code for the purpose of profiting from it is
a popular way of financing programming, but it is not the only
way for code to be financed. 

Taxes, Cooperatives, Grants and I'm sure other methods could be
used to finance programming. 

> 
> >> Society DOES NOT NEED access to the source code. Society's need with
> >
> >Society will change its mind as it discovers peer review of code makes
> >it more reliable and safer.  I for one would be real cautious of using
> >a 40 million line OS to run my business if only a single company with
> >a vested interest in my continued support of their revenue stream could
> >access the source code. 
> >
> >If I have a use for a spreadsheet, I would like to know that it doesn't
> >include the photographs of the developers and God knows what other
> >trojan horses in it.
> 
> You are missing a simply fact here. Most computer users are USERS not
> developers. Even had they the source for the application they could no
> more fix any bugs than read hyroglyphics.

I find X11 far more confusing than VAX Assembly language (o.k. I'm a
dottering oldster) but I can use XFree86 and benefit from its open
source. Emacs is bigger than I care to know thoroughly, but I benefit
from its being GPLed. The benefits of Free Software may most directly
affect developers, but they carry through to the users as well.

> 
> Indeed if someone has FREELY chosen to release their work under a
> license such as the GPL you may copy it. I have no problem with that. I
> have a VERY LARGE problem with those who insist upon trying to ermove
> that freedom!

Well, a condition of deriving from GPL is to GPL, so you do have to chose
from the beginning. If you mean the freedom of releasing proprietary
software, you are certainly free to do that (even encouraged by the
laws). It seems to me that more and more users and developers are
seeing the proprietary path as less desirable for a number of reasons.

Louis