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Pluralistic: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"
(pluralistic.net)
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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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I bet you aren't a software developer.
I'm a software developer, and I endorse the grandparent comment.
And you all just were happy and bro fisted people who ignored the licensing terms?
Yes.
Well, not literally, both because I'm more inclined to "high five" and you can't do either gesture over the Internet. But figuratively, yes.
Why don't you just gift away your software than? That's an honest question. You obviously aren't expecting to be paid for it, do you think in general developers shouldn't earn money with software or is it just you?
Because I don't make those decisions; my employer does. They ought to give it away, but they don't.
(The software I've worked on has tended to be either (a) tools for internal company use or (b) stuff used by the government/large companies where the revenue would definitely have come from a support contract even if the code itself were free.)
ParsnipWitch seems to have been eaten by a grue.
That's what happens when you forget to cast Frotz.
So, you would work for free for your employer?
That question is a red herring. My employer isn't paying me to write software; they're paying me to write the software they want instead of the software I want to make.
I am a system engineer who works on a project that is open source, AMA
The writer whose article is the subject of this post releases his books without DRM. He ends his podcast with a quote encouraging piracy. I found him because of an earlier book he released under a share alike licence
He has found that piracy increases the reach of his message, and increases his sales
That doesn't answer my questions.
Your question is irrelevant as claiming "you either support 100% paid or you support 100% free distribution" is a false dichotomy.
Software developer who gives away my software for free as Free and Open Source Software. I agree with the grand-grand-parent comment.
If I made software that people cared enough about to crack and pirate, I'd be happy that it's popular enough for that to happen.
I am a software developer but I've only worked on SaAS and open source projects.
I work on software which is pirated. It is even sold by crackers, who make money off my work. This does not make me proud.
What does make me proud is when a paying customer says they love a specific feature, or that our software saves them a lot of manual work.
Did you intentionally misunderstand the comment you replied to?
Pride unfortunately doesn't pay the bills. It's terrific that you contribute to open source, but not all commercial software can be open sourced.
Popularity opens other ways to make money. Open source is profitable for GNU. Cory Doctorow does fine.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect every commercial product to find profitability through exposure. I can attest to this first hand as I had published an open source Android game that was republished without ads. This led me to ultimately make the repository private, because I could not find a way to remain profitable while offering the source code and bearing the costs of labor and various cloud services.
On the flip side I guess I can take credit for the millions of installs from the other app… except they didn't publicly acknowledge me.
Was it under a "copyleft" licence (like GPL) that forces the other one to also be open source? Did you use a licence that requires you are acknowledged?
If you did the first, you at least pulled someone else into open source work
Yes, GPL.
At the time I had seen that it had been forked into numerous private repositories, I believe roughly 100 or so. Perhaps I could have made a claim to have the other app taken down through Google Play, but I had no faith that this would be resolved, and even if it would be, it would be an ongoing problem.
As for whether they would have made open source contributions or not is in the end a moot point for me, because the only change that I observed was that they changed the colors and typeface and extracted the in-game menu into a separate welcome screen. I would not have merged this back into my repository.
While I myself violated the copyleft of my project by taking it closed source, I felt that it was my only resort. I've continued to develop the game over the past few years and by modernizing it and adding additional content, I've been able to significantly outpace my competitor.
For me, this ordeal had been a bit of an eye opener. I came out of university fully supportive of open source and when I discovered how this affected a real world project, I genuinely approached this situation understanding that it was just a risk I needed to accept. However, in the three years that it was available on GitHub, I received only two small PRs, and combined with the license violations, I felt that there was really no advantage to keeping it open source.
While this is just my anecdote, it has changed my perspective on how open source can realistically work more broadly. I honestly can't envision any kind of business that needs to offset large production costs able to publish that content viably as open source.
Most people who work on open source projects have a lucrative job and work on Open Source on the side. I also volunteer, but I still need a job that actually pays me as well.
Reading some of the comments here it feels like speaking to little children who believe money magically appears on their account.
Tell me which so I can develop a competing service and steal your userbase!
of course you would. you would actually give them your house and wife, because you're so proud now. right?
Ah yes, because downloading Shark_Tale.mp4 is exactly the same as someone taking your house away from you and obtaining your wife and owning her as personal property.
Get some fucking perspective. I usually try to be polite online but this is just straight up moronic and you need to be told so bluntly.
Lmao
You need to disconnect the badness with the term stealing because you're just wrong. Yeah it's ip infringement. Yes it's illegal. Yes people are impacted. And still... Not stealing.
I have been for over 20 years actually! What do I get for winning the bet?
Edit:
One of our games we actually ended up supporting a form of piracy. A huge amount of our user base ended up using cheat tools to play our game which meant that they could get things that they would normally have to purchase with premium currency. Instead of banning them, we were careful to not break their cheat tools and I even had to debug why their cheat tool stopped working after a release.
How did your employer pay your salaries? Or did your money perhaps came from those people who actually do pay for in-game currency in your games?
You aren't.
Yes I am. And the two companies I worked for both were small, offered their products for cheap and still had people pirating the modules or circumvent licensing terms. It's a legit problem that a lot of people don't see why they should pay for software simply because it's sometimes easy to steal it.
So to be clear: was it possible to purchase and own the software? Or did users have to pay a subscription for a license? Because personally I'm getting sick of every piece of software thinking it's appropriate to require a subscription.
How about you don't use it if it is to be paid by subscription? How is it justified to go against an agreement just because you don't like it?
If something is wrong you have a moral obligation to go against it. Be it legal or not.
All hail the Grand Nagus!
That's why I am against indiscriminately pirating all digital goods. Because it's morally wrong to have people work for you and then not pay them.
Naa, I'd just pirate it. Fuck the rent-seekers.
Are you against employees getting good wages?
So either way I'm not paying for it. In that case pirating is not a lost sale.
BINGPOT.
I am.