license discussion

[H-Hour]

how open source projects benefit from their content being used for profit by someone else?

This is a misconception of commercial projects, I think. Look at it this way: with GPL, the license can never be closed. Let's say I develop a soldier model and release it under GPL. A commercial game developer grabs the model and animates it for his project. He can not close the license, so I can take the animated model back and use it in my game.

This kind of shared development is pretty common in the web development community, even when licensing doesn't require commercial content to remain open. I may use Wordpress -- an open source content management system -- to build a commercial website. In the process, I create a plugin to show the latest news articles from BBC. As a form of thanks for Wordpress, I will release it as an open-source plugin for other Wordpress users to use. Many of the thousands of plugins available on Wordpress's site were developed as a result of something like this: a commercial project using open source software and then feeding its helpful pieces back to the open source project.

[kurja]

thanks for the explanation.

[kOba]

Not very much agree with the philosophy of absolute freedom, according to this principle, if I leave my house open, you would be free to get in, feed you with my food, sleeping in my bed and finally sell my house. This is not freedom, is piracy is theft.
Another example: if a woman puts her miniskirt does not mean they want to fuck with you, but if you, despite its not, is coerced to have sex with you, this is not freedom, this is rape.

[geever]

I think software is a bit different from material things.

If you eat your croissant, noone else can do it, but if you use a software it doesn't prevent others from using it (and the fact others using (a copy of it) won't harm you).

-geever

[H-Hour]

Yes, check out the wikipedia table on exclusive/non-exclusive goods and rivalrouds/non-rivalrous goods. Much of the FLOSS philosophy is an attempt to create software as a public good, or free good, since it doesn't follow principles of scarcity (if I use your software it doesn't prevent you from using it). The commercial software community puts a lot of effort into disabling this natural feature of software (CD keys, authorization, etc).

Both approaches have reasonable aims and I understand if Koba doesn't agree. But this is the philosophy our project is built on. Without this philosophy, this project would have died in 2005 or whenever the original team quit.

[MCR]

I never understood how copying something can be theft ?
I mean if you copy something the original is still there, so it is definitely not stolen.

On the other hand I always tried to copy material things like my car or my home for others, but I unfortunately never succeeded 

[MCR]

I could not even copy a croissant 

[MCR]

A nice movie touching on this matter:

http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

[TrashMan]

I never understood how copying something can be theft ?
I mean if you copy something the original is still there, so it is definitely not stolen.

Think of it this way - you stole the idea, or possible proceeds. You are using something without compensation or approval from the creator. That is theft.

[Crystan]

I never understood how copying something can be theft ?
I mean if you copy something the original is still there, so it is definitely not stolen.

Yeah thats true - if you totally ignore that the creator put hard work in his work. That means you steal his "amount of work he done". So you give actually a shit about the creators rights / his person. Its like youre heavily insulting someone for the (good) work he had done and pay not any respect. Well its totally ok if youre inspired by someone else work and doin your own stuff - thats something completly different.

[kOba]

I must say that this is the first time I explain it so clearly. Everything remix beautiful films.

[Flying Steel]

That means you steal his "amount of work he done".

But that simply isn't the case here. You still have your work. The open source community still has access to your work. You can still do whatever you want with your work, including selling copies of it yourself.

So nothing has been stolen from you. All that has happened is an untalented, not very honorable person somewhere used a copy of your work to scam dumb people out of a small amount of cash. If the dishonorable person had honor, he would have offered you a cut of the money and if the dumb people were smart, they would have downloaded a copy of your work for free. But you still haven't lost or gained anything from these few, flawed individuals out there someplace.

[Crystan]

It was a reply to MCRs post - not about the guy who sold UFO:AI and or opensource stuff. I havnt mentioned me or anyone specific in my post.