Wikipedia talk:United States Education Program/Courses/Politics of Piracy (Kevin Gorman and Katie Gilmore)/Timeline/4

Question 1 Response
The issue of commercial vs. private use is a difficult one for a lot of reasons. On one hand, there's a question of profit - where an individual using an HTML code editor (purely as an example) to build a personal web page is obviously not going to garner much profit from it, a for-profit company using the program to build its website, and thereby increase its revenue, poses perhaps a potential problem of fairness. Should the company or business using the "free" software be entitled on principle alone to compensate the person who created the software? Should we distribute rights for software based on whether an individual is using the program for a for-profit purpose? And obviously, how would we police or monitor whether someone is using the program for the purpose stated? It's a very tough issue, if we choose to place any importance on it. Another thing that got me thinking in reading this article was the use of "copyleft" rules - if a person is prevented from changing the rules surrounding distribution, modification, etc. of their own, modified program or work derived from a free one, where do we draw the line between a "new" and "modified" work, so that someone does have the right to create a copyright or certain rules surrounding his or her new work? This is something that really is puzzling me.

Rachelxsutton (talk) 20:01, 19 February 2012 (UTC)Rachelxsutton

First, responding to the prompt, I think it's vital that people can reuse free software in commercial settings - many of the most prominent free software applications - LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Python/PHP) - only achieved their more mainstream status after corporations began adopting them. Companies bring scale, funding, and grant legitimacy upon otherwise seedy-seeming free software. Restricting "free software" from a domain seems inherently unfree. Personally, I feel like the FSF is trying to have its cake and eat it too. The FSF mandates that all free software be made easily available, whether in source code, executable form, or both. Yet, at the same time, it states that commercial redistribution of the software is perfectly fine, provided that aforementioned source code/executable be made available. Why in the world would anyone buy the product in this world? Firms that try to adopt the FSF's terms will find themselves limited to selling customer service - profitable yes, but nowhere near as profitable as selling commercial "closed" software. Do you agree that it is important for people to be able to reuse free software in a commercial setting?

wawert (talk) 20:01, Wawert (talk) 20:00, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Your response brought to mind Apple's model. Many of their software products are built on top of open source technologies, including BSD in OS X and Webkit in Safari. The company, which in the past focused on proprietary standards, now either uses open standards like HTML5, or creates and opens up their own standards, like with the Mini-Displayport connector. Apple doesn't make any significant money through software sales, even though they keep a good portion proprietary. Rather, they use and improve upon an open source core, add an easy to use and highly polished front end, and make money by selling it as part of a well-designed, pre-configured hardware product. Apple has found a way to be a highly successful company, as well as a good open source citizen.

Jwhite88 (talk) 23:38, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

software & copyright
It seems that the allowance of software and source code to be available for all to access and tinker with is an essential part of how information spreads in our internet focused age. Anyone that has knowledge of programming or coding can use these open source codes to expand both their own knowledge, and potentially expand or improve upon software, websites, codes, etc out there. Copyrighting software and source codes would be a huge impediment on how hugely rapidly the internet, information technology, and software is expanding and evolving. The question of if one should be able to reuse it in a commercial setting definitely is a difficult issue though. If there are enough changes, and it fulfills a different function, then commercialization probably would be fine. This then roughly follows the ideas behind fair use, I think (these issues are hard to wrap your head around- they're all quite abstract!). However, you hear of these silly issues such as the slide to unlock function being copyrighted in attempts for commercialization / not allowing competitors using the function. And then what if someone takes your software and improves upon it in some way, commercializes it and it sells like crazy, yet you receive no financial success from your original version? (oh well that's capitalism I guess. Although honestly with capitalism there would be no copyright at all....). Anyways, it seems that not being able to have software free and accessible would definitely be detrimental to our internet age. And that not allowing people to commercialize work that they do, even if it is based off other software (with, as mentioned before, perhaps a certain amount of change- how much, I have no idea...) would give too much power/control to the original owners of the software, and would maybe disincentive people from working with open softwares / sources. Charlotte (talk) 04:21, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Connections
This seems connected to an issue of been thinking a lot about concerning the distribution of news articles. News articles are obviously for the public good, and I think it is socially positive for everyone to have access to the news. At the same time, the news industry is suffering because now that news can be so easily accessed on the internet, no one feels the need to buy the newspaper they can just read online. This means there isn't enough funding to pay journalists to go and report on events directly, and so the quality of the information we consume is deteriorating. Is it important to protect the financial security of those providing us with the public good so as to protect the public good itself? It seems like this question applies to software in the same way. While redistributing software and making it accessible to everyone does promote innovation and improvement, might there come a time when it is so un-profitable to write original software that software can no longer develop quickly? I don't know to what extent this comparison works, because it may not be the case that there is a significant difference in quality between funded and non-funded software development, but I thought it was worth bringing up.

Lesldock ([[User talk:Lesldock|talk) 21:44, 21 February 2012 (UTC)lesldock

Do companies have the right to use free software for profit?
I feel it is essential for commercial interests to be able to use free software for several reasons. First, it seems to violate the very definition of what free software is to deny use/access to any group, even if that group will profit from that software. Second, many programmers make their name by creating free software/programs that companies find useful, and profitable, this name recognition is key for some programmers to get venture capital for further projects that may be for-profit or as a huge point on their resume. However, there is still an interesting question about whether there is a level of profit at which a company should compensate someone who made free software. Some companies, like Valve, like to hire those who make free content (mods) as programmers when they see potential in their work—the best example being Counter-Strike, that went from being a mod to one of the most successful online and tournament games of all time. But, what if Valve had just taken the idea for Counter-Strike without hiring those who helped formulate the original concept and then made millions upon millions of dollars from it? Would we say that they acted ethically? They did use free software, which was even formulated from their own source code, so why can’t they profit freely from it? Here, it seems like there is a weird grey area between what we must allow for companies to be able to do with free software, and what we should expect them to do if said software makes them huge profit margin (i.e. give those who came up with the software some share of profits, or at least a job)

Ethanoksen (talk) 16:22, 21 February 2012 (UTC)Ethanoksen