The open source movement provides a win-win situation-- everyone gives to and benefits from the collective knowledge of all. But open, transparent and trusting systems require open, transparent and honest people.
Wolfire Games recently open-sourced their code, and found that it was being used to pirate their game-- for a profit-- on the official Apple app store.
It is an unfortunate truth that the more benevolent a system is, the more it can be taken advantage of; and the people in it, hurt. They can and will bounce back quickly, but only if the trash is taken out.
The Lugaru incident (which is what I assume you are referring to) was awfully brash. Piracy will always exist, but I doubt that pirates will be able flaunt so openly for much longer. As the Internet's influence grows, we will be able to know more and more about what other people are doing, especially as far as our personal assets are concerned. We've already gotten to the point where the idea of ripping somebody off right next to them in the Apple store is practically ludicrous (which is why I think the Lugaru incident received so much attention.)
ReplyDeleteMuch of the piracy at hand depends on the licenses used by the parties. Apache's license, for instance, allows any user to take the code, reuse it, and even sell it. The only limit they place is that the name be changed. Somebody could try to sell this stuff, but, at least in the case of Apache, the users are smart enough to know better and go for the good stuff (open source).
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