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by carlosjobim 299 days ago
You're asking a lot from law enforcement if you're giving away something for free and then demand that law enforcement make sure that people use the thing exactly as you have mandated.

It's akin to me putting up billboards and stickers around town and then demanding to decide who gets to look at them.

Same thing with online publishers. If they want to control who uses their content and how, there's a tried and true solution and it's spelled "paywall".
2 comments
os2warpman 299 days ago
>You're asking a lot from law enforcement if you're giving away something for free and then demand that law enforcement make sure that people use the thing exactly as you have mandated.

I don't think the Free Software Foundation is asking a lot when it uses the rule of law to control who uses their content and how.

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dns_snek 298 days ago
This is why we can't have nice things. People contribute to communal efforts such as free software but inevitably some assholes come around to exploit everyone's good will and their contributions for their own gain. That's not enough of course, so you further demoralize them for being stupid enough to believe that they would be protected by laws that were specifically designed to protect them, and mock them for pursuing higher ideals than immediate personal enrichment through paywalls.

And no, sharing your labor for free with anyone who wants it (as long as they agree to a few simple rules) is nothing like putting up a billboard and "demanding to decide who gets to look at them".

The entire premise of billboards is to force people to look at something they had no intention or desire to look at. You weren't forced to search for, look at, or use someone's free software or other type of content. You did so willingly and intentionally.

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carlosjobim 298 days ago
Well then it's like handing out free birthday cake recipes in the middle of the street to anybody who passes by and then calling the police later demanding that they arrest people, because they're baking the cake even though it's not their birthday.

Recipes are a good real world example of open source working properly. Anybody is free to use and improve. And anybody is free to not share their recipes or improvements with the public.

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