[ On Sunday, September 12, 1999 at 23:07:20 (-0400), der Mouse wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: what happened to the lm75(?) driver?
>
> And I probably would be, except that you are prepared to invoke the
> "big hammer" of copyright law to *make* me do so.
> 
> *Ask* me to, and I (probably) will have no problem with it.
> 
> *Demand* that I do so, especially when you go so far as to back it up
> with The Law, and I'm far more likely to flip you the bird and either
> go write my own or do without.  (TNF doesn't seem to go as far in this
> direction as I do.  At present, I can live with that.  That doesn't
> mean I like it.)

I don't have quite so much faith as you appear to do in the users and
abusers of intellectual property.

Or maybe it's just the degree to which I've been abused in this
department in the past.

I've written more than enough code for other people that's never been
allowed to see the light of day.  I want the stuff I write for public
publication to remain public and while I'm willing to avoid using the
GPL in many circumstances I'm not willing to go totally public domain.

I'm not too worried about the bad guys stealing my code, especially
since I probably don't have the means to defend it in the first place,
but I do want to keep the honest folks honest and no matter how much I
might like the concept of anarchy we just can't jump into it with both
feet without first making a whole lot of other changes to the society
around you.  TNF seems to be explicitly trying to cater to the
capitalists in the crowd and I'm not about to give them all a completely
free ride.

The fact that I might at times wear the other hat is yet further reason
for me to be very explicit about how I want to be treated.  Hopefully
the more good work I do for public consumption, the more I will be able
to convince my more capitatlist supporters to pay me to continue to
produce code for public consumption.  I'm trying to set an example here,
as I hope many others are too -- I believe intellectual property belongs
solely to its creator and that if this person wishes to make it publicly
available for "free" then it should remain protected to the same extent
that it would be if it were to be kept a trade secret.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
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