On Sun, Feb 01, 2004 at 05:45:48PM -0600, John Hasler wrote: > I wrote: > > You are not a leach. A leach takes something away from the host: when > > the leach is done the host has less blood then he had before. When you > > make a copy of my software you gain but I lose nothing. > > Brett Carrington writes: > > Except a chance to be paid back for you hard work, in either money or > > source code improvements. > > "Paid back" implies a bargain: that he told me "If you write this software > I will pay you back with x." No such bargain existed. I wrote the > software for my own reasons. Now that it exists it costs me nothing to > share it with him. > > > That's what you lose. > > After he copies my software I possess everything I had before he copied > it. Thus I lose nothing. Absence of gain != loss. Sorry if I missed a part of the thread then. My point is that a huge portion of things "leached" do have an expectation receiving "pay back." Music artists expect royalties, programmers expect wages (or in GPL'd code, license compliance), and so forth. I don't think the majority of leaches are in good karma-standing w.r.t this.
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