Re: OMG!

["J.Q.P." <jqp@hotmail.com>]

Kelli Halliburton wrote:

> Guess what? For the Apple II, writing new software and attempting to sell it
> on a commercial basis is pointless.

Dont agree with you.  Apple II market isnt dead...it's barely breathing,
but there's still enough users to support some limited developement.

Write a good program that's useful to me, and I'll pay for it. I know
a number of others who will too.

> 
> I won't stand up and demand that the pirates get out because the pirates
> perform a valuable service in maintaining the availability of out-of-print
> software.

Out of print doesnt mean public domain.   If the authors object,
you think people should steal it anyway...just becuase, IYHO,
the market's dead?

> If an author won't write a new program of type X because an old
> program of that genre is available through the services of pirates, it's not
> the illegality that's at issue -- it's the market.

Market conditions dont invalidate copyrights. 

Recently I bought an old Apple II program off eBay.  Cost me $31, which
is probably pretty close to what it was new.    If there was some way
I could have paid that money to the original authors and gotten a
"fresh" copy of the program+manuals, I would have.   (the software
itself is fairly useless w/o the manual)

> If there was ever a newsgroup that needed to pay attention to Richard
> Stallman, it's this one. No, he does not advocate piracy. He *does* advocate
> that all software should be free, but he does not subscribe to "by any means
> necessary."

You dont understand Stallman's use of the word "free".  He doesnt mean
free as in zero-cost.  He means free as in "freedom".  The aims of the
FSF and the GNU project are to open up source code and keep software
algorithms from being locked up with patents.   They should be free for
any programmer to implement.

The GPL absolutely allows you to take zero-cost, open source software
(that somebody else wrote)
and resell it for a profit. (if you can get any)    What the GPL
stipulates is that if you make modifications to the software, you
make the source code of the changes available.