[thelist] [OT] Gift Culture on the Net: A Rant

John Dowdell jdowdell at macromedia.com
Mon Aug 20 16:23:45 CDT 2001


That's funny... I always interpreted "gift culture" as "Here, I give you a
gift, let us all be happy" rather than "Your gift does not meet my
expectations, give me your wallet".



> when we're talking about decrypting CF code, or decrypting/decompiling
> any piece of code to which you have access, we're not talking about
> theft, but about pulling something apart to see how it works.

You could quibble over whether it's "theft" or not (prosecutable? moral?
the thread boggles), but you'd have to concede that this action would not
respect the wishes of someone who donated something to the world.

It's a reasonable step from there to realizing that such actions decrease
similar giving in the future.



jd












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