Media Piracy - Some Thoughts from Someone Who Creates Stuff

[hunter]

5. Is there anything preventing you from releasing your software into the wild?

If it's not bringing you an income, set it free... maybe someone else will update it.

My parents are both artists. Their art is not how they paid the bills. Same with my wife.

Writing software is an art.

Your contract writing is the economic equivalent of selling portraits and caricatures at the boardwalk. The customer can post this art on their facebook page, no extra charge.

The same model works for open source software, and open source is actually a protection for the artist since the writer can continue to use his own innovations without limit, without some corporation claiming the artist sold them some "right" to the work, a unique way of doing something that maybe the artist hadn't yet recognized in his own work.

Bill Gates didn't get wealthy writing software, he got wealthy by controlling it, by owning the copyrights. Many smaller software developers were bought out or simply crushed by his corporate machine. Most of the innovators, the artists who wrote the software of the personal computer revolution, did not end up working for the corporate giants.

Proprietary software impedes innovation and limits both the art and the artist.