Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Copyright opinions

[roy.evison]

---- Simon Ward <address@hidden> wrote: 
> On Wed, Dec 02, 2009 at 06:04:53AM +0000, address@hidden wrote:
> > I would tend to agree but what two parties set up is between them
> > unless published under particular auspices. Yes software will have a
> > useful, or sellable, life-span but setting parameters may not be
> > useful.If you are a free-lance developer how do you guarantee your
> > income?
> 
> This question always comes up, and the answer is to do what you do best
> and sell that: Develop, and charge people for your development effort.
> 
> Stallman’s opinion appears to be a very staunch find another way to make
> money that doesn’t involve subjugating users, but I find that when you
> put it that way developers may become upset and defensive, and not very
> willing to listen to reason.  I’m not primarily a developer, but I feel
> some of that too.
> 
> If you are a developer, base your pricing on actually developing the
> software, not on developing something once and expecting to sell it lots
> of times to make your money back, which usually involves restricting
> users’ freedoms in order to prevent them from using or modifying the
> software they have and possibly locking them in so that developers can
> monopolize further development of it.
> 
> Other ways are to offer services around your software.  Support it,
> maintain it, and charge for these efforts.  Sell printed manuals, or
> even traditional boxed copies (but when you do that, charge for the
> production, with a little profit, not the development - there was
> little, if any, development effort into the reproduction).
> 
> Simon
> --Simon,
          I know this subject gets an emotional response from all sides and 
friends cannot even see the difference from a tiered pricing policy and 
restricted software which means any agreed legislation across counties would be 
difficult. Perhaps the answer is to have a coordinated copyright law that is 
settlable in any country, or at least set reasonable limits on it, e.g., why is 
it part of an estate for inheritance?
Roy. 
> A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
> simple system that works.—John Gall