Re: Backup Copies

["Sheldon Simms" <sheldon@interprice.com>]

Im Artikel <3ACCB2D4.E74CBDC7@inetnebr.com> schrieb "Roy and/or Janet
Miller" <millers@inetnebr.com>:

> King Surfer wrote:
> 
>> I just bought two Apple Platinum 3.5" drives at a Good Will store for
>> $2.00 a piece, both in perfect working order. In one drive was an
>> original program disk of Fantavision by Broderbund Software for the
>> IIGS. Works too. What should I do; spend the next six days on the phone
>> trying to locate the last sitting CEO of Broderbund to ask him how much
>> to make the check out for and where do I send it?
>
> If it's the original, then you don't have to. If it's been released as
> freeware, ditto. If you have made a good faith effort, and get no
> response, then it's up to your conscience.
> If you have no sense of ethics or morality, then you won't bother. Only
> those with a guilty conscience will complain if someone points out the
> status of a work of the programmer's art.

Nonsense. I am a programmer, and I and the company I work for would
be quite unhappy if someone started passing out copies of our products
for free on the internet. If, however, the company goes bust and we've
all moved on to other stuff, and there's no market for our old software,
then I won't give a rip if someone puts it on an ftp site.

The problem is the assumption that law equals morality. It doesn't.
Not so long ago in the US, there were lots of laws saying that black
people had to sit at the back of the bus. Was that moral? Was that
ethical?

Morality is a much fuzzier concept than just what's written down as a
law. Some people believe that morality is defined by God, or some other
infallible authority. I don't expect there's anything about distributing
old software on the internet in the Bible. Some people believe that
morality is a matter of not harming others, of doing unto others as you
would have them do unto you. If that's morality, then who's being harmed
by distributing old programs that the authors and/or copyright holders
have abandoned?

As a professional programmer, I believe in the golden rule -- that's why
I think it's wrong to copy software that the author/copyright holder has
an interest in. But I don't think it's wrong to distribute software that
the author/copyright holder has abandoned. In fact, I think it's right,
because no one suffers any harm of any kind, and many people benefit.

-Sheldon