Michael T. Richter wrote:
But really, copyright is off-topic I would suspect. We should
probably continue this discussion off-list.
Yes it is, but I can’t resist the temptation anymore. You can draw a
parallel with programming here.
Most of us working in non-web, coprorate environments find that getting
Ruby accepted in projects is usually a very hard cause. Some of us
actualy ignore tool/development guidelines and get the job done -
usually being 3 times faster and achieving milestones within time and
budget constraints exonarates my sins.
It’s ®evolution from the inside. I’ve been working and talking about
Ruby within my own company for over 5 years now. At first I was deemed
graphical and I am still the target of puns and diggs, but suddenly I am
only one of very few (like 3 in 300) who didn’t fall asleep during the
long dictatorship of statically typed languages at work.
So while I will not condone pirating books for anyone having access to
them (and by that meaning having the money or not being prevented to buy
them), I can also cannot hide the fact that when I was a penniless
student in the backwaters of Greece in the early 90s I pirated like
crazy (think xerox copies not PDFs): It’s what’s enabled me to pay for
books now.
Knowledge is a very powerful thing. You keep it from people and their
ignorance makes them selfish, irresponsible and greedy. Educated people
won’t usually in good conscience pirate a book (music and movies are a
different thing I imagine - mostly to do with the tyranny of
distribution networks). They will come back and pay for it (yes, yes,
generic labeling and aphorisms here). So I say educate them and
yourself, and when anybody wants to prevent you (by setting development
guidelines, ridiculous import taxes or outright banning deviant texts)
go around them any way you can.
V.-