From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Sep 5 06:58:11 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8F6E316A4BF for ; Fri, 5 Sep 2003 06:58:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mta7.adelphia.net (mta7.adelphia.net [68.168.78.193]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A6C9243FE1 for ; Fri, 5 Sep 2003 06:58:10 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from potentialtech.com ([24.53.179.151]) by mta7.adelphia.net (InterMail vM.5.01.05.32 201-253-122-126-132-20030307) with ESMTP id <20030905135811.SZUS11719.mta7.adelphia.net@potentialtech.com>; Fri, 5 Sep 2003 09:58:11 -0400 Message-ID: <3F589671.1010404@potentialtech.com> Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2003 09:58:09 -0400 From: Bill Moran User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030429 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Mark Murray References: <200309051246.h85Ckaqi037611@grimreaper.grondar.org> In-Reply-To: <200309051246.h85Ckaqi037611@grimreaper.grondar.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Ugly Huge BSD Monster X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2003 13:58:11 -0000 Mark Murray wrote: > Bill Moran writes: > >>My point here is that it's not the GPL that's causing the problems, it's >>the legal system, and the copanies that try to use it as a revenue stream. >>As long as the legal system allows people to file lawsuits as a method of >>generating income (as opposed to actually protecting themselves) there will >>always be the danger of _any_ license, copyright, or agreement of any kind >>creating a lawsuit. > > Very strong agreement. > > I'm getting more than somewhat sick of folks ("one-product-wonders") > who produce one Album/Idea/BetterMousetrap and spend the rest of > their lives in lawsuits, hunting down violators (real and imagined) > rather than producing more. > > Lawsuits are how you _defend_, not how you _conduct_. The crux of the problem, however, is where the fine line between defend and conduct lie. If I write a program that does something totally unique (hard to imagine in this day and age, but bear with me) and market it. Then somone else makes a program that does the exact same thing (although, written from scratch), have they violated my rights? Should I defend myself? In my opinion, no. They're allowed to write competing software. If I write this program, and someone reverse engineers part or all of my code (or steals the source, etc) and markets that, should I defend? In my opinion, yes. In that case, they are stealing my work, not my ideas. Altough other people would consider me wrong for my opinion on the second circumstance. Right or wrong, these differences of opinion are the basis for this whole argument and many others that are relevent to our profession. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com