[eridius]

So it's ok to take other people's property, as long as it's "culturally important"?

TBH this makes me think of the old practice of smuggling jade artifacts out of China. Hey, it's culturally important, so clearly that means it's ok for other people to take it, right?

[Dylan16807]

The "out of China" part is the problem there. That's a problem that's pretty much irrelevant to a question of whether or not to distribute copies of data files.

And I didn't say that cultural importance is an automatic justification. The new star wars movie also has cultural importance, but there would be large downsides to free-for-all piracy of it during its release year. Downsides that don't exist with 20 year old source code.

[yomly]

This is more like if an annotated original script of A New Hope were to find its way into the hands of a fan and s/he gave it back to Disney instead of copying it.

[eridius]

You don't have the right to determine whether someone else's source code is old enough that it's "ok" to steal. Not the legal right, and not the moral right either.

[Dylan16807]

Obviously I don't have magic law-changing wishes from a lamp. Are you telling me I don't get to have an opinion wrt lawmaking? Because that would be kind of rude and antithetical to a democratic government.