neat story

[Rui Miguel Silva Seabra]

On Wed, 2002-03-20 at 07:39, Michael Kallas wrote:
> Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <rms at 1407.org> schrieb am 20.03.02:
> > On Wed, 2002-03-20 at 00:13, Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote:
> > > El Tue, Mar 19, 2002 at 11:22:06PM +0000, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra deia:
> > > > Boss: Does GPL really allow someone to use commercially the output of a
> > > > program?
> > > I don't understand. Most licenses allow the output of a program to be used
> > > commercially. I wonder whether you can forbid it. Even Microsoft  allows 
> > > Word documents to be printed and sent to customers or providers...
> > 
> > I told him that, but in his reasoning, you had paid for Word...
> Nobody prevents you from paying $$$ to the nessus guys or to the 
> FSF, GNU etc. So maybe your boss feels better if he does :-)
> Besides, you can contribute to any free software (or to free software in
> general) easily, in contrast to proprietary programs.

I told him that. But he...

> Everything _can_ be abused, nobody forces you to do so.

...only views software from the terms of: food in the table for the
family. Now, this is justifyable, but he doesn't understand that the
motive wasn't making money. Maybe they can and they do, I don't know.
It's just that it can generate a lot of money, and they may never see a
compensation from the abuser... he thinks that the GPL doens't protect
their rights.

That's clearly a view from the proprietary side: if they can copy and
use without paying us, how can we earn money with the software?

There was no change in the arguments when I told him that the business
model couldn't center itself on holding the costumers as hostages but
probably by making them feel so happy they'll be compelled to come back
again and pay for more.

Cheers

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Ghandi
+ So let's do it...?
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