Nigel Wade wrote:
Mike Schilling wrote:
Stallman came up with the idiotic "It's immoral to charge money for
software you put time and effort into cretaing."
No. He came up with the perfectly reasonable "It's immoral for you
to
charge money for software which *someone else* put time and effort
into creating, and allows you to use for free".
If I read a journal article describing an algorithm, it's perfectly
moral for me to implement that algorithm and sell the result. It's
also perfectly moral for me to sell a Java program, which is useless
without the JVM and rt.jar that Sun puts time and effort into creating
and then gives away for free. It's also perfectly moral for me to
repackage and modify Xerces and Xalan, and sell a product that
includes the modified versions of those. I've done all of those
things, and don't feel at all dirty.
I agree that the GPL is based on the proposition you've stated, but it
reflects a feelings that selling software is itself immoral, and
that's crap.