Quote:
Originally Posted by ebookapps
So why start this thread with legal arguing?
|
Because some of us take the GPL very seriously, and our respect for, and trust of, a company can hinge on whether they respect that license. If someone is unwilling to fulfill the obligations they agreed to with the GPL, that can raise questions as to what other legal obligations they may consider to be a mere "formality".
The folks on MobileRead aren't your average bunch of end-users. We're early adopters, technophiles, geeks, hackers, gearheads, and the like. Unlike Joe Average, who probably wouldn't know or care if something he's buying is made from ground-up babies, we pay more attention than most to where our stuff comes from and who's involved. We're weird that way. Look at the discussion over in General about whether people would buy a DRM-locked ebook. A fair number, even knowing they can strip the DRM, refuse to do so just because they don't want to give their money to a company that uses DRM. Joe Average would just give you a blank look, but it's a significant issue to a bunch of us.
I've been doing a lot of comparisons to food lately; I guess I shouldn't post when I'm hungry. In this case, the comparison is to people who just buy whatever's on sale at the grocery store to people who want locally-sourced, organic, sustainable food. Joe Average is one of the former, while you'll find a higher than usual percentage of the latter (at least where software is concerned) around MobileRead.
That's why we're asking. We want to know who we're doing business with. We want to know that the people we're doing business with don't think that fulfilling their legal obligations is a mere formality. Joe Average probably doesn't; we do. And sometimes, the principles of the seller can be more important than the technical details of the product.