Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 19:48:24 07/21/98
Go up one level in this thread
On July 21, 1998 at 15:45:55, Enrique Irazoqui wrote: >On July 21, 1998 at 12:35:20, Peter Klausler wrote: > >>On July 20, 1998 at 13:40:55, Enrique Irazoqui wrote: >>>The example I gave before: I am sure many of us use the same operating system >>>running on several computers. How many of us bought a copy of this operating >>>system for every computer we have? I guess few of us or even no one. Does this >>>make thieves (your expression) out of all of us? >> >>1) You can't justify your theft by claiming that it's common. > >All my software is legal. All my chess software is so legal that was sent to me >by the manufacturers themselves. No theft involved of any kind, thank you very >much. > >The example I gave had to do with using the same copy of an operating system on >several computers I have (also legal=bought). > >Enrique maybe I'm the exception then. Because I have a copy of *everything* I use. I have win95 on this notebook dual-booted with linux. I have win95 on my wife's machine here at the house. And I have win95 on another notebook she uses (it is ours personally as well) and I can produce 3 copies of win95 CD's with the original Microsoft Hologram logo on the cases. Ditto for *every* piece of software I use. From microsoft office on two machines, with two CD's here, to a host of crap sent to me with my P6/200 gateway. At UAB, we are *required* to maintain careful software inventories and be *certain* that if we have 10 copies of a piece of software on 10 computers, that we have *10* licenses for that software on file in my office (I am our lab director here). It's a pain to keep up with, but we do so. And we do *not* copy without paying the license fees (we have hundreds of "site-licenses" where we can copy a CD ourselves, and forward a small license fee to the vendor due to the large volume we do here. But it is 100% backed up by paperwork. I find the cavalier attitude about software piracy to be quite surprising here. As though it's the same as taking a book of matches from a hotel bar. Even though the matchbook is worth $.02 and was given away by the hotel, while the software was worth much more and was restricted to one user. Another sign of gross moral decay in the world I suppose... > >>2) All of my software is legal. I'm not a thief. >>3) Stealing chess software is particularly crass in the face of >> so much useful freeware for chess. A chess software thief >> can't even use the lame argument that he can't afford the >> software that he "needs". Download Crafty, Winboard, and >> CDB and quit whining. >>4) Nobody needs to play chess. One might argue that stealing >> food to feed a starving child is justifiable, but stealing >> software to support a hobby is without any excuse. >>5) If there's something you want your computer to do, and you >> can't afford to buy the software that does it, get a free >> compiler and write it yourself. If you can't do that, >> learn how. Besides being criminal, software theft is a >> sign of laziness. >> >>Violation of a software license is theft, plain and simple and >>no more justifiable than theft of computer hardware. Run freeware >>or write it if you can't buy what you want. And have some more >>respect for those of us who create this stuff.
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