[tompe]

Originally Posted by carandol

Those who get something for nothing and don't give anything back even though they could, when doing so would benefit the writers whose work they are enjoying, are being greedy by my definition. It's the assumption of a lot of companies that people will always take and never give back that leads to things like DRM.

Or the writer is greedy that want money for his pleasure activities like producing art. He can take a boring job like anybody else. And if he want me to read his art he can pay for my time.

I think your definition of greedy is not so useful and not at all consistent with people intuition about the concept.

Actually, open source developers are entitled to charge as much as they like for open source software -- the only legal obligation is that if they've based their software on someone else's code, they must release their own code for others to use.

And it they produce open source they have to distribute the source and then anybody can distribute it so it is a bit hard to sell the source.

But that aside, you seem to be implying that if someone gives you something for free, you would never dream of giving them anything in return unless it was written into a licence agreement? That the only morals that are worth following are the ones that are written down? Earlier you said "Just because you may have been _____ enough to buy the paper book for sentimental reasons, you don't have to feel jealous that others aren't losing money the same way." We don't know what that blank signifies (stupid? kind?) but it implies that you think less of people who would give money to an author out of a sense of moral obligation rather than contractual necessity.

I must say that if things are given with the expectation of something in return than they are not given for free. Actually I would feel bad paying for something that was free. It is like I do not trust the person that says it is free and I think he is lying or something. So I would never pay for something that was free. But i might donate money to the writer to be used for future work but that is something totally different.