You've raised a valid point about art, but it's still very different to software, you don't have to go round fixing bugs or anything. The development model isn't compatable with open source software, it's more like computer games, can you see people going to watch an alpha version of a film and suggesting improvements then watching the beta version and final release? I think they'd get pretty bored of watching the same film over and over.
I'm not even sure what we're trying to achieve with this art vs. software crap.
Whatever the differences, the law shouldn't "protect" against the copying of any released "product" (be it a python script, a binary for a computer to execute, the source code of a complete application, a piece of hardware, whatever. All these things can be copied (everything can), some easier than others.) IMO. If the developers decide not to release the source code (should there be any - an XFC file or a bunch of C files), so be it. Usually they'll be losing out. They won't ever be fit to prevent people from copying a more expensive future "product" (because it's not possible to prevent copying - especially digital things (that's why digital things are so great for us humans)).
Richard Martin Stallman is a moron becase he views GNU as a religon and goes round preaching to everyone pissing them off.
Um, his name is Richard
Matthew Stallman (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_M._Stallman).
"GNU as a religon" what do you mean? He makes speaches, mostly about free software. Usually mentions GNU. His beef is with non-free software, not non-GNU stuff.
Then, he does other things. In his opinion GNU is the principal developer of the typical "Linux" system. So he calls it GNU, and adds "/Linux" because Linux is the other critical component in the system, and because simply calling it GNU does
not go down with Linux-tards, just like calling it Linux doesn't go down with GNU-tards.
Personally, I agree with him. By "system" I mean what software it takes to get a decent (as in I want a linker and a C library) minimally-operable system up. That means the bootloader (GRUB/lilo), the kernel (Linux), the C library (not strictly necessary but who the fuck writes in assembler these days?), a command interperater (bash/tcsh/whatever, the shell. Wouldn't be necessary if Linux had an embedded one, I believe.), and a dynamic linker (GNU ld). Mosty systems, including mine, use GRUB, Linux, glibc, and bash, and ld (provided by binutils).
That's a lot of GNU, but also a lot of Linux (Linux is a
huge project). I'm not gonna refer to such a system as "Linux". "GNU/Linux" captures it all. Especially because it was the GNU people (beginning with RMS) who initially set out to develop a free OS when Linus Torvalds was in nappies I will consider GNU the principal developers.
I can't read any of his articals, I can't read beyond the first couple of paragraphs with most of them without getting annoyed at him and thinking fucking moron.
Then let that motivate you to read, fully, a few of his articles and post back here a response
(and email it to
[email protected] too if you like. I've emailed him before, he replies \o/ ).
Don't get me wrong I agree with some of the principles (like doing something about software patents) but I don't think he's going the right way about winning people over.
Well I see you're doing a much better job of "winning people over" to do stuff about software patents.
