Fee Beer as in Freedom

[Bazzy]

Even if you compile with gcc the program can be proprietary as said above: http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/lounge/21345/page2.html#msg112364

[tition]

Of course, your whole argument is based on the assumptions that copyright laws apply retroactively, which they don't, and that there's a statistical correlation between geographical closeness and generic likeness, which is even sillier.

The silliness was intended. I was just illustrating a logic similar to that leading to the notion of "intellectual property" in the context of software and video codecs.

Similarly silly is to accept that writers and musicians would be jobless and that programmers would be out on the street without copyright laws, especially based on how poorly copyright-protected were those professions at the time of Shakespear and Mozart. (I know that programmers didn't exist then, the pun is intended).

On the issue of copyright laws being retroactive: I was not assuming they are, I was just implying they should be changed to be so. Disney, Warner Bros and I have no problem offering a law whose only purpose is our own financial benefit.

[helios]

No law applies retroactively. Otherwise, you could be accused of breaking a law that at the time didn't exist, and it would get even more complicated if you went to prison and the law was later abolished.

[tition]

Wikipedia generally agrees with you, however its not 100%.

However, not all laws with ex post facto effects have been found to be unconstitutional. One current U.S. law that has an ex post facto effect is the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.

That said, I am sure exceptions can be made to fill certain people's pockets.

There is no inherent human right of intellectual property. Intellectual property didn't exist 500 years ago. The only reason intellectual property exists is to serve society: some areas of human activity are better off in the *limited* presence of *limited* intellectual property. The line between "intellectual property" and intellectual monopoly is very thin, especially in software design.

[helios]

After the Patriot Act, no new US law can be used as an example for anything other than maybe an item in the "How to Make a Police State" list.

The line between "intellectual property" and intellectual monopoly is very thin

It's so thin it doesn't actually exist. The point of copyright is precisely to give authors (and their children, their children's children, and so on) a monopoly on the distribution of their work, with the rationale that this encourages creative work, obviously.

[tition]

It certainly encourages creative work for the first person to try to do something, but hinders anyone after. This is definitely hindering creative work of anyone but the original author, which is questioning the whole "benefit to society" line of argumentation. The rationale that intellectual monopoly encourages creative work is completely doubtful (and clearly doubted).

Intellectual property is not a problem in, for example, the field in literature (I consider reusing a story literally a bad thing). However it causes great problems in the fields of science and invention, and, clearly, in software engineering.

There are many important sciences in which intellectual monopoly/property, is completely rejected and considered unethical. For example: physics, mathematics, astronomy,... This list however doesn't include, for example, microbiology and chemistry. There, one could argue, intellectual monopoly is overall more detrimental than beneficial (but varies from particular issue to another).

[helios]

microbiology and chemistry

Don't forget pharmacology.

[Duthomhas]

However, it is reasonable that people be compensated for their work...

If you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars developing something new, it is just and right that you reap some financial benefit. Without laws protecting an author (etc) from people who just want to cash-in on variations of something you worked very hard to develop, the cost of development becomes a disincentive to think new thoughts.

However, I do believe that there should be a reasonable limit to the effectiveness of said laws, and the time a company (etc) has to recoup investiment and earn profit for their work -- after which it is fair to have to compete normally.

Disney, for example, still has copyright to Mickey Mouse, even though it should have expired years ago... (Who would confuse any Disney character for not-Disney, though?...)

Meh..

[imi]

Who would confuse any Disney character for not-Disney, though?

Doh!

My Grandma was giving my nephew a cartoon video for christmas. "The flying elephant".

For a 89 year old woman, it may look like Dumbo. We just looked at each other silently. ;-) The nephew was brave and said "Thank you". I think the video is still in its original wrapping.


Ciao, Imi.

[tition]

"Open source is magic": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmZyyBVbkOQ

Absolutely amazing what open source does. I was making huge printouts in latex format for my server. Then I said, why not give directly compiled pdf's to the user?

The whole thing, from googling the command "pdflatex" to having my server actually serve pdfs took half an hour. This I call magic.

To me, the GPL'ed LaTeX is a living proof of how good is the license. A huge corporation like Microsoft didn't get a non-crashing equation editor in their program in 15 years (not because they couldn't! the real reason remains enigmatic). And, not like they aren't trying to hijack the format: my windows Vista keeps overriding my free .tex editor with some totally crappy default MS .tex editor. The version they offer doesn't even compile all standard latex properly, yet MS would never include the wonderful ultra-powerful GPL'ed versions!

Long live open source!