[plug] Fwd: [SLUG] Lucky 13 for Linux

[Christian]

skribe wrote:

> Can I borrow your car this weekend?  How about your house?  Your woman?
> Sharing is far from natural.  It takes a level of maturity from both parties
> not to mention trust and respect.  How many people here always pay for
> the shareware that they use?  The human creature is naturally avaricious and it
> is only their environment (social, psychological and physical) that encourages
> them to share.

Umm... I only have one car.  I don't have a house (the one I live in is
not mine to give you).  My woman?  I'm not sure how she'd feel about
that.  Oh wait... you want some software?  Here... let me make you a
copy... *5 seconds later*  There you go - enjoy!

See - sharing software is natural.

Very, very natural.  They've called it "piracy" and threatened hefty
penalties and yet people have been sharing software ever since the term
came into existence.  You're spot on that people are naturally
avaricious - but when you can make an indefinite number of copies of
something and give them to someone else without losing anything but a
tiny amount of time, things are a little different.  Indeed, you could
argue that people share software because of this nature you describe -
it costs them nothing and they believe (usually quite rightly) that the
person they share with will, in turn, share with them.

The Free Software community is based around sharing software AND the
right to share it.  And we make our own software so there's always
plenty of new code to be shared.

Quite honestly, I don't know why people who don't care about Free
software use Linux.  Sure, it's often an excellent choice in many
situations - but often there are even better options.  If you don't care
about moral issue *AT ALL*, why not use FreeBSD?  or Solaris?  or...

(that's a rhetorical question btw - I don't want to start a huge
argument :)

Regards,

Christian.

-- 
========================================================================
I'm not trying to give users what they want, I'm trying to give them
freedom, which they can then accept or reject. If people don't want
freedom, they may be out of luck with me, but I won't allow them to 
define for me what is right, what is worth spending my life for.
                                                    - Richard Stallman