Re: [NTLK] FW: Fwd: Hacked WiFi driver

>
>
> I reluctantly say this, but I'm in agreement with most of what Dale has
> written, even though my own leanings are against capitalism. But although
> I'm writing from a different perspective, most of my conclusions are the
> same or at least similar.

Politics make strange bedfellows (in the figurative sense). If the Grand
High Mucky-Muck (or whatever his title actually is) of the Ku Klux Klan told
me that two plus two equals four, I'd have to agree with him on that point,
though I might not agree with him on the status of Josh, the Black man who
lives across the street, or Seffe, the American citizen of Mexican origin
living next door. Truth is truth, even if Satan himself says it. There
really are some absolutes, despite liberal media suggestions to the
contrary.

It's all well and good talking about this kind of the thing from the
> perspective of those who will profit, if not benefit, from being the
> takers,
> but from the standpoint of the "takees", it still looks more like theft.

Kinda does, doesn't it?

Even the word "abandonware" could be seen as a handy bit of casuistry rather
> than as a name for anything real. Someone has suggested that the "real
> question" should become ""Is Hiroshi's WaveLAN driver
> abandonware...?" I'm
> still inclined to think the real question remains "Is Hiroshi's WaveLAN
> driver *his*?"

This is legal semantics. Did he write it? If so, then it is "his", in one
sense, but if he didn't copyright or patent it, he might have difficulty
establishing a legal claim to it. Also, there is a question of whether or
not his patent/copyright could be broken. I have "invented" lots of things
over the years, but somebody else "invented" them first, a patent on "my"
flash steam engine would never stand, nor would one on "my" actual
honest-to-God-really-works-right-now-with-today's-technology nuclear fission
star drive. Quite possibly a copyright could be broken if it could be
proven that somebody else wrote it first. Then, though, that "somebody"
would have copyright as soon as he wrote it down.

A better solution might be for some talented individual to write his own
version of that driver independent of the one in question. Unix existed
before Linux, yet Linus Torvalds did not "steal" the code, nor are the
developers of Haiku "stealing" BeOS from Palm. They might achieve different
ends, but get there by different routes.

Dale, if anyone does steal your photo and publish it against your will, I
> hope you'll sue their trousers off.

Well, much as I'd like to think that my photograph of Ronald Regan receiving
a dog as a gift from a supporter in Green Bay, WI is worth stealing, Ronald
Regan has been dead for some years now, so any value my photograph may have
is in the far future, which is why it will end up in a museum archive. Some
researcher may discover it some day and it may see the light of day again,
but that will be a long time in coming. In any case, I doubt that I shall
sue anybody over it.

Shalom.
> Christian, Ornery Old Anti-capitalist
>
> Us Ornery Old Men tend to be long-winded, I guess.

Dale

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