The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Yigal Chripun]

Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 04:12:37AM +0100, Jb wrote:
>> No-one is trying 
>> to erase certain ideas / artistic works from history. We are in fact trying 
>> to do the exact oposite. We are trying to create an enviroment where ideas 
>> and artist works flourish.
> 
> Then why is this debate about rights? Rights are irrelevant - what
> matters is the results.
> 
> If your goal is to create an environment where ideas and art flourish,
> great. That's a good goal, and that is where your defence should be
> focused.
> 
> Forget all this repetitive talk about rights, and talk about how the
> law helps or doesn't help achieve this goal (or whatever other goal you
> want to set).
> 
> Copyright law might be a valid way to achieve this goal. It might not
> be. There might be completely better ways (something I'm convinced of).
> 
> 
> Setting a real world goal for the debate lets both sides create an
> objective test case for their arguments, which would let it finally come
> to an adequate conclusion.
> 

I agree with you.
if we talk about results: allowing free redistribution of information
allows young aspiring artists to go straight to the public and spread
the word about their art.
this also works for software developers with the same model. You do not
need to convince someone with lots of money to invest in you in order to
create your software. you do not need to start your own company.
Many OSS developers done just that.
i.e Linus published his kernel online, it got successful and now he's
being paid to develop his pet project. same goes for the core developers
of all OSS. the problem is greed. people think they can go write a
text-editor, patent the sh*t out of it and become billionaires. also on
the way screwing anyone else that also wanted to produce a text editor.
so yes, with OSS you won't become the next bill gates with your
software, but, we'll have more diversity of software and more people
could make a descent living by being software developers.

besides, why does it make sense that we should have a small bunch of
people controlling all software and getting all the benefits?