Re: Piracy Bests ITAR

[Mutant <wlkngowl@unix.asb.com>]

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Bruce Murphy wrote:

> > Has nothing to do with socialism... even works nice in a capitalist
> > as in the case where people try the software, decide they like it,
> > and then buy it latter when they can afford it. Sidekick and WordStar
> > became popular because of this "borrowing".  MS-DOS probably would > 
> be so widespread if it weren't pirated.
> 
> Uh huh? And you are saying that there were *heaps* of computers out
> there which could run MS-DOS which didn't come with it? And how much
> more would those companies have made had the products been *forced* to
> be sold rather than pirated.

The point of the original article was that those products probably would 
*not* have been sold.  What life would be like in other circumstances is
hard to consider... and rather moot (a friend of mine has an expression
for describing hypotheticals... "What is my grandfather had four arms?").

FSF/GNU and projects like FreeDOS, if they were several years earlier, 
would have made things quite interesting....

A point NOT in the orig. article but hinted at in the subject, though: if 
people cannot *buy* the software because of regs like ITAR, they'll steal 
it.
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