Xref: utzoo alt.religion.computers:1291 gnu.misc.discuss:716 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucdavis!csusac!unify!jde From: jde@unify.uucp (Jeff Evarts) Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,gnu.misc.discuss Subject: Re: Morals Summary: Am I missing something? Message-ID: Date: 5 Jan 90 23:22:45 GMT Reply-To: jde@unify.UUCP (Jeff Evarts) Organization: Unify Corporation, Sacramento, CA, USA Lines: 48 This went int as a follow up because postnews don't always work here. Okay, a lot of people are going on and on about how "my" license (let's say I'm the big, evil software distributor) is restricting their freedom. Let me try a couple of analogies, please respond by email... Say I meet you on a streetcorner in front of my pizzaria. People who buy my pizza like to eat it and enjoy the atmosphere. I like to keep the atmosphere "nice", so when I see someone hanging around outside my shop, or leaning against the window, I... 1. Ask them to leave 2. Pay them a dollar to leave 3. Offer them five dollars for their pocket fluff if they leave 4. Offer them a slice of my pizza for 10 cents if they leave. _All_ of these would be agreements between that person and I, all of them would be (assuming they were recorded) legally binding. As a software vendor, I am selling people software for much less than I could if anyone could freely copy it. (Face it, this is true. If anyone could copy anything, I would have to recoup my _entire_ development cost on just one sale, no matter how small that cost got from my being able to copy other people's software) Therefore, I am offering you a _deal_: buy my software at this price, and in exchange _do_not_ give my work away. If you don't like this deal, refuse _all_ of it, and do not buy my software. (For those of you who think that software is 'expensive enough', or that somebody is making 'too much' money, and that is your justification for breaking the agreement, I grieve for you and your small vision. The people living not too far from you in the cheaper parts of town could use that excuse to break into your house and steal from you) No one can _make_ you buy their software. If theor terms are too restricting, do without them. The guy could always refuse all four offers and remain in the street... after all _that_ is his right. How can it possibly be more complicated than that? What am I missing? -Jeff Evarts --jde@unify.com ---csusac!uunify!jde #include What? You think my boss would listen to me?