Steve Langasek vorlon@dodds.net wrote:
When you buy a book, are you paying for the physical paper, or are you paying for the information contained within its pages?
If you are talking about publications by the US government, or books that are in the public domain or have an expired copyright, then I am just paying for the paper. For something with an active copyright, you are also paying for copyright access for the publisher.
How is this anything more than a semantic difference?
we are talking about licenses, aren't we?
Just because I can build a greenhouse, plant the seeds and grow my own 'copies' of the fruit doesn't mean I'm not paying for fruit.
bad example, because fruit still has value. And if you want really scary permutations of this, start looking at genetically modified corn and what companies like monsanto are doing....
How I read that is that you can charge for the _service_ of copying, but you are NOT charging for the content.
Semantics.
we are talking about licenses and the law. How can you ignore semantics in this context?
Whatever the license governing the software in question, I'm buying the same thing when I buy a CD -- and usually less when it's a proprietary license. If one of these vendors is "selling binaries", then so is the other.
just because you aren't willing to see the distinction, doesn't mean that there isn't one. Why do you think the phrase "Right To Use" exists (you didn't buy the binaries in that case either)?
Or, if the only thing I'm buying from RedHat is the service of copying, then the only thing I'm buying from Microsoft is insurance against legal harrassment -- since Windows binaries are just as easy to come by, and just as easy to copy, as Linux binaries are...
what does availability have to do with anything? What am I missing?
-r
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Roger Fujii