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Simon Williams wrote: > Tom Potts wrote: >> If I sold you a car without brakes because that was more user friendly >> you'd have me in court tomorrow - you'd at least get your money back on >> the argument that 'the product was not fit for purpose' let alone >> downright dangerous. BIG Mistake #1. Software cannot be compared to physical objects. You have *never* bought any software. Read that again. You may have paid for a licence to use software and paid for some media to transport that software to your machine(s), but you only own software you have written yourself (and if you release that under the GPL, you're the author but no longer the owner anyway). If I buy a car, there is one less car in the world for you to buy. If I copy a source package, what is lost? You may compare software with the text of a book but not the book itself. You can compare software with a recording of speech but not the media that holds that recording. When you buy music, you only own the media - the music is not within your ownership to do with as you please. You absolutely do not have the right to make thousands of copies of that music unless that right is specifically granted to you under some form of licence like Creative Commons etc. Buying software actually means "Buying media that has something on it." That's why free software isn't such a confusing term - software cannot be traded like cars, only the media can be traded, the software has to be licensed. Free software therefore means a free licence - a licence that gives you freedom to use that software your way. Software comes under copyright law. Cars do not. Trademarks don't apply to software, only to names used to label the software. Patents - as originally intended - do not cover software as it is specifically excluded, just like you cannot patent a song or a page of text. > On an aside I noticed the other day that the EULA for XP Pro EULA. End User Licence Agreement. It's closer to freehold vs leasehold in bricks-and-mortar property. When you own the freehold to a property, you can do what you like with that property (subject to planning laws). When the property is leased to you (i.e. you rent), you do not own the property and your ability to do things to that property is severely curtailed. It is up to the leaseholder (the landlord) whether certain changes can be made to the property. When software is compared to freehold instead of leasehold, it opens the door to accusations of theft (software cannot be stolen, only the media can be stolen), piracy (ditto) and patents. This is the main problem with the oxymoron "Intellectual Property". No such thing exists. Software may have an owner, it certainly always has an author. Depending on the licence, the author may or may not be able to prevent others doing certain things to or with the software. Authorship != ownership. Licence != purchase. Software is not a physical object, it is only stored on physical objects. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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