[NCLUG] Re: Linux World domination (was "Re: NCLUG Digest...", etc.)

[Scott Kleihege]

John Bass wrote:
 > The right to profit, is exactly the right secured by copyright. It's the
 > right that you can prevent others from giving your work away to deprive
 > you from that profit. It's the right to prevent others from profiting
 > from your work, and deprive you of the income from your work.

It isn't that simple.  Copyright is not just about the rights of the author, 
but also to encourage the creation of new works.  Copyright does address a 
need for profit as a motivation for authors, but it's our job as citizens to 
question how far that should extend for the optimal social good.

You'll notice that I avoided using the word "right" in that last sentence to 
be avoid any equivocation between different definitions of the word "right". 
  It's right that you should profit from writing software, but you shouldn't 
necessarily have the Right to profit.  Is that clear?

It's important to find a balance between the rights of authors and the 
rights of the public.  When software copyright holders use their monopoly 
power as a wedge to selfishly restrict the rights of users indefinitely, it 
is not balance.  Obviously, taking away the ability of software authors to 
make a living is not balanced either.

Where the balance should be is a matter of opinion, not fact.

As someone who writes software as part of my profession, and as someone who 
has suffered as a user under the yoke of proprietary software, this is my 
opinion:  I have no sympathy for software authors who feel threatened by 
free software because their business model involves selling software as a 
product, instead of as a service.  Welcome to evolution.  Adapt or die.

 > GPL take that one step farther, and uses that same right, to give away
 > your work to the public, and prevent others from profiting from it.

The GPL doesn't prohibit profit from redistribution.  Quite the opposite.

"If you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge 
a substantial fee and /make some money/.  Redistributing free software is a 
good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit 
from it." (/Italics/ theirs) [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html]

 > Questioning any authors right to profit from their work, *IS*
 > questioning the "right of authorship".

I don't think you have the authority to declare international law like that.

 From doing several google searches, there doesn't seem to be an agreed-up 
definition to the "right of authorship".  It does seem closely related, in 
international law, to "moral rights" 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights], which include "the right of 
attribution, the right to have a work published anonymously or 
pseudonymously, and the right to the integrity of the work... Moral rights 
are distinct from any economic rights tied to copyrights."

I question the right of authors to profit from their work at the expense of 
the rest of society, but not the other moral rights.  When you say that I'm 
questioning the right of authorship, you misrepresent what I'm trying to say.

 > So, how about thinking, rather than the personal attacks?

Wait, I'm the one engaging in ad hominem attacks?  Citation needed!

Pointing out the logical fallacies in your arguments is not a personal 
attack, it's just debate.

-Scott