Jochem Maas wrote: > Colin Guthrie wrote: >> Don't be so naive as to think they just don't exist. It's all about >> personal integrity - people who work with Free and Open Source systems >> like PHP should feel pretty bad if they abuse someone else's hard work >> by not buying the book. > > should they? Well, yes, they should. > is the world so black and white? none of the authors > mentioned will be going hungry any time soon ... in fact if 1,000,000 coders > stole these books and subsequently started doing php for a living then each of > the authors would probably benefit from the increase in the 'php economy'. Arguably, but that's not really the "spirit" of open source. As a general sweeping statement, the ends usually don't justify the means. > not to mention the trees, they don't feel bad when you 'abuse someone's hard work' > by stealing a pdf. "stealing" a pdf being the operative word. Legitimately obtaining the PDF would make the trees happy. They are very moralistic those Ents :p And you certainly don't want to anger them :) > and if I gave my great, great grand children the choice, would they have me > abuse IP/copyright or natural resources? I don't think it needs to boil down to that - I sympathise with your sentiment, but don't think it's anywhere near as cut and dried a choice as that. All I'm really saying is that there are a lot of questionable things out there, be it pirated software, books, movies and music, or other even more deplorable things. These problems will never, ever be solved by locking away the means.... there has to be the desire to not reach that end. Col -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
