[Pan-users] Re: OT: freedomware vs... Was: Building Pan on Windows?

[Duncan]

Leslie Newell posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:14:55 +0000 as excerpted:

> I'm jumping into this one a bit late and I am undoubtedly going to get
> flamed for this but I think there is a place for closed source and
> licensing.

I disagree and believe that's unethical, but as long as it's not illegal...

And I gotta respect you for taking on the debate.

> I am a programmer and I make a living from the programs I
> sell. Most of my programs sell to a niche market, probably 70% of whom
> are hobbyists. I do use a license key system to try to reduce copying.
> Of my total work load, probably 10% is support work, all freely
> provided. Companies that make money selling support services for open
> source software rely on their supported software being available in huge
> volume. Although only a very small percentage of users are willing to
> pay for support, there are enough to keep these companies going. There
> is no way I could make a living out of just selling support services as
> there are simply not enough potential customers for my software. To put
> it bluntly, if I made the source code freely available I would go out of
> business in a very short time.

Well, design your code on top of someone else's base, where both it and 
your code are freedomware, and the time you spend reimplementing the 
wheel, as they say, is seriously reduced.  If what's left is /so/ niche 
you're doing one-offs, in-house that's shop code, and externally, that's 
consultancy.  Either way, getting paid to do it isn't normally a problem.

If what's left is /not/ so one-off/niche, then a community solution saves 
time energy and money for everyone.

> I personally don't like copy protection systems but they are a necessary
> evil.

Disagreed.

Have you read Eric S Raymond's _The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and the 
related collection of other essays?  He puts it far better than I ever 
could.

In fact, some years ago, back in the 90s, I was a VB coder, and created my 
own MS Windows window manager, useful for showing and hiding windows, 
placing them at specific locations, etc.  This was before the glut of 
freeware and shareware window managers around the time of Windows 98.  It 
got to the point I liked how it worked, and wanted to release it for 
others to work with.  I struggled with what I was going to do for a 
license.  I wanted to make the code available, but was worried someone 
else would take it and then claim they wrote it, legally locking me out of 
my own code.  At the time I knew nothing about FLOSS, freedomware, the 
GPL, the Free Software Foundation, Open Source, etc.  As I didn't really 
know what to do with it, I basically ended up letting it sit as I moved on 
to other things.

Then later I found Linux, Open Source, Free Software, the GPL, etc, and 
loved it, as it struck a responsive chord from my earlier experience with 
my own stuff.

THEN I found that book and read it.  WOW!  It was as if he had mind-read 
and I was reading my own thoughts on the subject, without even knowing 
he'd read them.  Of course he hadn't -- it wasn't just me who had come to 
those same conclusions about software freedom and its ultimate effects on 
community and society.  I had discovered a whole new world that I thought 
existed only in my dreams of what /should/ be!

So go get a copy of the book and read it, or google the essays and read 
them online.  Either way, it's well worth the time, and it could very 
easily change your life, much as it did mine!

> When you purchase a software license you are purchasing a license
> to use that software, not the software itself.

I'd say software is ideas.  The ideas in abstract form can't really be 
sold or patented, or at least shouldn't be able to be, legally or 
otherwise -- it's wrong.  The ideas in concrete form, as implemented in a 
particular set of code, can be copyrighted, but even that's less than 
ideal, with the better form of it the copyleft, making both the idea and 
its implementation freely available to others on the condition they make 
their own modifications available under the same copyleft ideals, 
generally the same or compatible copyleft license.

> Copy protection, while it is almost universally disliked, is simply a
> means of enforcing the license agreement.

Make that "simply a means of depriving me of my rights to study and modify 
the code, distributing both it and its improvements under a license 
guaranteeing the same rights to others."

I hold such (EU)LAs to be unethical and invalid, due to that violation of 
rights.  Never-the-less, I respect them as legal if unethical, and as 
explained up-thread, couldn't trust the code anyway, as a blackbox from an 
unethical provider, with who knows /what/ sort of code inside.

> My system does not lock the program to a specific
> computer and it is for life. I do not charge for updates. IMHO charging
> between 60% and 100% of the package price for updates is wrong.

IMHO, not respecting the rights of your users to study, modify and share 
the code is wrong.

> Let me
> reply to some of the  recent statements:
> 
>> 1)  Activation is an anti-feature, period.  That is, it does NOTHING
>> good for the purchaser of the software, while having all /sorts/ of
>> risks in terms of breaking things.
> 
> As I described above, I have no choice.

Did the slave runners, deriving their livelihood from their trade, have a 
choice?  Was what they did wrong regardless of whether they made a living 
at it or not?

I'd say yes, they did, and yes, it was wrong.  Same with what you are 
doing.  It may be legal, but legal <> morally/ethically right.

> If I did not control my software I would go out of business.

And along with Stallman, I'd say good!  Controlling it in regard to use 
and modification by other users is wrong. Businesses that depend on that 
control are wrong.  Having such business go out of business is a GOOD 
thing, just as having a slave trader go out of business is a GOOD thing.

> Therefore it does have a benefit for the end
> user. If it did not exist I would not be able to sell my software and
> therefore the software would not be available. I have a large number of
> very happy users who are willing to pay for my programs.

If the software has respected the rights of the user and the provider goes 
out of business, that isn't the end of the line, as just like a car can 
still be taken to a mechanic after the manufacturer quits making it, so 
ethical software can be taken to another coder for patches and 
improvements as necessary, regardless of whether the original provider 
remains viable or not, because the source code is available and there's 
legal permission to change distribute, and recompile, as necessary.  Thus, 
while an individual author abandoning a collection of his code remains 
sad, it's not the end of the world for that code and its users.  As long 
as there are users, there's the chance for someone else to pickup the code 
and run with it, and if it's valuable enough to the users, they can in 
fact pay someone to do just that.

And if you have a large number of users, it's not so niche as you were 
claiming above, after all.  And if they're willing to pay... set the code 
free, and charge for development of new features.  Once they're paid for 
and released, that's part of the freedomware code, as well.

Again, read The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Homesteading the Noosphere, 
etc.  That collection of essays could easily change your life!

>> Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so
>> if people who do this run into trouble, that's good!  All businesses
>> based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.

> Huh? Is it then morally acceptable to directly copy a best selling
> author's book and sell it yourself?

We're talking about software here, not books.  Narrow focus.

However, there's certainly a model such that an author can put up his work 
only after it is paid for, but then it is free to distribute.  Users can 
pledge X dollars to a trust, perhaps free form, or perhaps on a 10 
thousand user-units, $5 each, purchase one or if you want it out faster, 
purchase fifty.  When the alloted number of user units or big goal has 
been reached, publish the work and collect, with the work then entering 
the public domain, free to be used by other to modify and build further, 
if desired, and certainly to be copied and shared with friends, as 
desired.  That's just one model.  There are others.

And... countless bands buy their own instruments and perform monthly or 
every weekend, for perhaps a meal, a beer or two, and tips.  They aren't 
making their costs back, but do it because they love it.  Who's to say the 
world wouldn't be better if everyone was creating because they loved it, 
not for what they'd be paid.  We'd certainly not be lacking for content, 
and arguably, quality couldn't be much worse than the crap the RIAA and 
friends are foisting on us today.

Same with book authors, screenplay authors, actors, performers, etc.  
Same, obviously, with software coders, where the movement as we know it 
today started.

But there's a place for copyright, tho I'd argue in far reduced form.  
I've seen a proposal for 20 years copyright, 7 years patent (but no 
software or business method patents, there's copyrights for individual 
implementations), that sounds reasonable to me.  But even then, building 
on what one takes from the communal pool, with accelerated (even to 0 
time) contributing back in kind, should be strongly encouraged.

> How about some clever gizmo that has
> cost millions to develop. Is it morally acceptable to directly copy that
> item and sell it yourself without paying any royalties? Why should
> software be any different? Should we simply scrap all copyright and
> patent laws because they are not 'ethically legitimate'?

Fund more such research publicly, with the results being equally public.  
Tax for example, medicine, at say (numbers picked out of the air for 
illustration, it's the idea that's important) a cent a dose-hour, over the 
counter, two cents a dose-hour perscription, or start it at maybe five 
cents a dose-hour and reduce it a half a cent a dose-hour a year, until it 
reaches half a cent a dose-hour...

But I did say there's room for patents still, even copyrights.  Just 
reduce them to something sane like 7 years patents, 20 years copyrights, 
and encourage and reward accelerated return to the public domain.

> As a closed source software vendor it is in my interest to keep my
> customers as happy as possible. My sales rely on my good reputation.
> That means I have to fix bugs quickly and add new features as they are
> requested. Open source authors don't have that impetus. I use both
> Windows and Linux.

Umm...

"As a slave vendor it is in my best interest to keep my customers as happy 
as possible.  My sales rely on my good reputation.  That means I have to 
keep my slaves healthy and at least happy enough and under enough threat 
that they find staying around better than the risks of trying to run 
away.  Employee agencies for free men don't have that impetus.  I use both 
slaves and freemen employees."

One could add something about how valuable this particular slave business 
is to the local economy, how many mouths, both freemen and slaves, it 
feeds, how much extra productivity there is and how much business would no 
longer be viable if slaves weren't depleting the fair wages of the 
freemen, etc...

That's effectively what I see in such claims...

So no personal offense intended, and thanks for being brave enough to step 
up to the debate, I certainly do respect that, but honestly, I /would/ 
rather see businesses of this type, which I view as unethical, go out of 
business.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman