El Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 09:46:56PM +0100, Niall Douglas deia:
No, theft is when you lose what was due to you by right. There is a very simple formula for determining whether a moral crime has been committed - was there a victim? If there was, it was a moral crime.
I suspect your definitions of crime and victim are circular. Anyway, nobody has said copyright violations aren't crimes (or fellonies, or whatever is the proper term). We're just saying it isn't stealing, it's a different crime.
Imagine I start telling lies about you and your company and I'm so successful at it that people cease to trust you and you get out of business. Is that stealing ? no, it's libel. Imagine I kill you and therefore you loose all you had. Is that stealing ? not it's much worse, it's murder. Not all crimes are theft.
About your views on authors needing reward and GPL being uncommercial, I'm afraid your problem is you don't understand the world you are in. Your belief is that the GPL is not attractive enough for authors, but then you see a lot of authors using it, and you can't understand it. You keep telling things against the GPL as if every author was forced to use GPL for her original works. If you don't like it don't use. Depending on which license you use (and what your works are) I will use your works or not. It's as simple as that. Of course you have a right to tell people not to use works under GPL or not to produce such works, as I have a right to explain why I think it's a good idea.
It's also very dangerous to think that work deserves reward. That's completely skewing the market. If I start working at moving stones around my yard from one corner to another and then back again, I'd better not expect any reward from it. Likewise if you start coding something and distribute it with unreasonable license terms, don't expect me to pay you for it. The reward is afforded because of the /value/ of the work done, not because of the fact that some work has been done. It also depends on what alternatives are available. But pretending that just any work should be rewarded is dangerous (since we need more optimal work for what is needed not just more work, that'd be just wasteful). Maybe if you start looking at things from the user point of view you're realise the GPL makes commercial sense (at least when the market is a level playing field, i.e. legislation is right).
It's also unrealistic to pretend that the reward for any work must be monetary, but that is not so important in comparison, you are right to base any development framework on monetary incentives, as long as non paid work is not forbidden or discriminated.
P.S.: Sorry if I can't keep in this thread. The only reason I read it at all is that I couldn't find a wifi hotspot to download fresh mail to read in this train trip.