Improving copyright (was: Re: Copyright T-Shirt)

[Niall Douglas]

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On 11 May 2004 at 18:03, Ricardo Andere de Mello wrote:

> There's a little problem with this idea. the minorities. For me this
> idea is just an improved copyright. Why should I make something to a
> minority, like blind people, if I can make something to a larger
> audience to gain a lot more money? Why not distribute the money
> "equally"? People would just do what they want, simply because they
> would have the money to do it. Do you really think that someone that
> does something for a larger audience deserves more money than other
> that does something for minorities?

If you distribute the money equally, there's no incentive to produce 
quality work and plenty of incentive to produce as much dross as 
possible to try and grab the biggest slice of the pie as you can.

Also, and I hope this isn't taken the wrong way, blind people are a 
tiny minority. True they should receive more attention than merited 
by their number because it could happen to any of us but not /that/ 
much more attention.

If you look at things now, most blind people-specific work is done by 
volunteers or government grants and I'm guessing the former would be 
larger. In other words, it would happen anyway irrespective of any 
copyright system.

> Aren't we (free software  guys) a
> minority now? Our audience is small compared to windows audience,
> windows programmers should gain more than we?

One major gripe I have with the FSF et al is that they totally 
mistarget their efforts. Who needs free software ideology the most 
right now? Why none other than Windows users. Why the hell therefore 
is the lion's share of free software effort going towards non-Windows 
systems?

Projects such as ReactOS should be getting the very fullest of weight 
from the FSF, not Linux [1]. I don't know why people have missed this 
very self-evident point.

Anyway, point is that yes Windows programmers are far more important 
than any other kind of programmer though I wasn't talking about 
programmers per se. This is how the world has always worked - it's 
why all shoes are made for a European foot etc. and every attempt to 
work counter to how things must be fails.

[1]: Of course, technically speaking the kernel for GNU systems is 
meant to be the Hurd.

Cheers,
Niall





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