On another mailing list, I observed this awesome thread that I'd like to see continued here. I was reminded of this in seeing Steev's recent subject line "Free."
It started with a discussion on copy protection of video. It came down to someone saying "With audio...if you can hear it, you can digitally copy it...and with video, if you can see it, you can digitally copy it." With one, you use a DV recorder, with the other, a digital audio recorder from the audio unit's sound-outs. This was supposed to make the point that you can never-ever-ever come up with perfect copy-protection, because there will always be a way to circumvent it.
Then someone said, "For myself, I've been using computers since 1982 and I've NEVER paid for software in my entire life, and I never plan on it in the future"
This got a few programmers in a tizzy, and other programmers in agreement. One such programmer said "I consider my software to be my art, and I give my music away for free, so I think my software should be given away for free, too. If someone wants to pay me, fine, but I don't require it."
I thought, my goodness, how interesting...many of the programmers sounded like many musicians in the music industry. Some reminded me of Lars Ulrich, others reminded me of the Offspring guys.
If you think it's okay to download mp3's of your favorite bands and never pay for their albums, then do you think it's also okay to download cracked shareware?
This is not to imply that ALL of you never pay for music or software. Some people download music for free, but pay for shareware, and I know others who download music on a "try & buy" basis.
Still the discussion remained quite interesting....
A few argued that music should be free, but software shouldn't. They said they worked hard getting their education, worked hard on their software, and they deserve money for it. Well, some musicians worked hard on their music, they've been trained to play, and what not...and THEY feel they deserve to be paid.
This reminds me of a Don Joyce post, where he was discussing music on the net. Today we have FREEware and we have SHAREware. Some programmers feel their stuff should be free, and others wish to get paid. The same with msuic...some artists give their stuff away, and others charge.
However, once again...this guy's comment was "I NEVER paid for software, and never intend to." I know for a fact he has MS Office 2000, and other types of software that you've got to pay mucho bucks for to legally own. These software vendors clearly weren't GIVING AWAY their stuff. Like Metallica says they weren't giving away their albums.
Do any of you think it's somehow unethical for this fellow to not pay for ANY of his software? If you're a programmer who charges for software, would you be pissed he's running a hacked version of yours?
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