Re: Iran, copyright, Matlab and Octave

[Thorsten Liebig]

Jordi,

It is not about taking away or stealing, it is about accepting a license or not.
It is about trust, that you will accept the rules how to use the software.

What would you say, if Mathwork would decide to include Octave in their 
commercial software and sell it and make it closed source and make millions
with it?
They would probably cite your statements here and say: "Well we don't take 
anything away from you! Life with it."
I think I know what you would say.

It is the Copyright that holds the GPL.
Without Copyright, the GPL is worthless...
Without Copyright any free software (as in freedom of speech) would be 
degenerated into free software (as in free beer) only...

regards
Thorsten


Am 10.04.2013 16:33, schrieb Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso:
> On 10 April 2013 10:24, John Swensen <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Morality is the purview of philosophers and the religious. Even those who
>> try to loosely define morality as harm to individuals and society, you could
>> argue that copying Matlab is immoral because it affects the livelihoods of
>> those working for The Mathworks.
> My livelihood would be much better if everyone who copied Octave also
> would send me a few dollars. So what's the difference between copying
> Octave and Matlab? Why are you not feeling immoral about copying
> Octave? People who copy Octave are hurting my livelihood too, aren't
> they?
>
> To answer my rhetorical question, no, they are not. They aren't
> contributing to it, but they aren't hurting it either. Copying Matlab
> doesn't harm the people who make Matlab any more than copying Octave
> harms me. It is the same act. The only difference is TMW calls copiers
> names names and I don't.
>
>> Your argument that The Mathworks is not losing anything by Matlab
>> being copied is pure conjecture on your part, as you don't have
>> access to their marketing, sales, revenues, and other financials.
> It is not conjecture. It is plain fact. They haven't lost something
> that they already had when the copy happened. Nothing was taken away.
> A hypothetical future acquisition isn't a present loss. You can make
> financial charts about how much more money you would make if everyone
> who copied paid for it, but *that* is pure conjecture, conjecturing
> what would happen if everyone who copied also paid, which does not
> happen now.
>
> - Jordi G. H.
>