From owner-freebsd-chat Sat May 13 17:48:59 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from sharmas.dhs.org (c62443-a.frmt1.sfba.home.com [24.0.69.165]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0E06137BBF6 for ; Sat, 13 May 2000 17:48:51 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org) Received: (from adsharma@localhost) by sharmas.dhs.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id RAA17160; Sat, 13 May 2000 17:48:29 -0700 Date: Sat, 13 May 2000 17:48:29 -0700 From: Arun Sharma Message-Id: <200005140048.RAA17160@sharmas.dhs.org> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why are people against GNU? WAS Re: 5.0 already? In-Reply-To: <20000514035957.J22405@physics.iisc.ernet.in> References: <391D71FE.1570F551@asme.org> <391D4DAD.FD80980A@picusnet.com> <003b01bfbcdc$6059fb40$a164aad0@kickme> <391D71FE.1570F551@asme.org> <20000513205610.A22103@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <3.0.6.32.20000513143506.00895650@mail85.pair.com> <20000514010614.A16058@happy.checkpoint.com> <20000514035957.J22405@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Reply-To: adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org.nospam Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org In muc.lists.freebsd.chat, you wrote: > Very well stated. > In fact, Stallman's central point (which he makes repeatedly) is that > the US copyright law was intended to benefit the public, not the > authors. Benefits to authors are only an inducement, not a reward. > He has no problems with such restrictions as long as they benefit the > public; his case is that, with today's extended copyright periods and > new laws and media, they have ceased to do so, and in the case of > software, restrictions on copying benefit nobody. Not true. It benefits Microsoft. > Read, for example, > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/reevaluating-copyright.html > You may or may not agree. But I don't see how anyone can read it > carefully and seriously call Stallman a communist. My reading of all his writings is that software is fundamentally different from all the other materials that get sold in the market. I think a majority of people don't believe in that argument. Moreover, what "can" and "should" be sold is not a theoretical decision. In a capitalistic society, what can be sold, will be sold. -Arun To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message