Vicious symbiosis of pirates and kopirastov or as a text editor turned my worldview

It is believed that there is a war between the pirates and the copiers. This is very similar to the truth. But it is also true that their opposition fosters and strengthens both sides. Would pirate parties in Europe be able to gain any significant number of supporters without the loud legal reprisals perpetrated by the copyrights? Would the authors continue to be content with crumbs from the table of corporations and the enslaving conditions of exclusive contracts, if copywriters were not their only defense against forced pirate "communism"?



The struggle of pirates and copyrights polarizes society, giving the false impression that there are no alternatives to the two extremes. One extreme - the one that adheres to the kopirasty. The right holder can dictate any conditions to the consumer - what can be done with the work, what is impossible, how much it costs, where and how to buy it. The other extreme - pirated - the copyright holder can not do anything. All information belongs to all and the point! Both extremes are destructive. Both of them kill the author.



The rightholders tolerated the Megaupload service for a very long time. But for some reason, their patience finally broke at the very moment when Megaupload violated the unspoken rules of the game and was ready to offer a legal earnings scheme for the authors. This is what most fears copywriting - a legal, white scheme for rewarding authors for their work with minimal restrictions on the freedom of users and with minimal contributions to intermediaries. For the entertainment industry, much more terrible are combed and docile iTunes and Google play, and not bullies like The Pirate Bay and Megaupload.



The civilized sale of digital content via the Internet not only threatens traditional publishers, it knocks the ground out from under the feet of pirates. Why rummage through file storage facilities if you can find the same thing for a penny in a beautiful and convenient store? Of course, so far, due to licensing restrictions, the range of such stores is inferior to the range of pirated trackers, and prices are still not negligible. But it is the shops, not the pirates will eat copyists. Authors increasingly prefer to deal with large automated trading platforms, where everything is transparent and standard, rather than with old publishers with their appetites and awkwardness.

')

Unfortunately, stores do not solve another problem - the problem of freedom and openness. It is just a change of outdated, snickering corporate top of the “old-communists” with more dynamic and adequate “young-teenagers”. This is far from open source. Better than before, but not as good as we would like.



And Open Source has its own problems. There is one dirty word on the letter F, which too often stands next to Open Source and is perceived as its synonym. This word is “Free.” Free as in “free beer”, not as in “free speech”. By the way, the most accurate word for Russian is the dirty word for the letter “x” - “freebie”. Many in the open source world see this problem and prefer to use the word "Libre" instead of "Free." It helps badly. Between Open Source and freebies in the minds of most people is a bold equal sign. Freebies are the worst that could happen with Open Source. At the dawn of programming, in the academic environment, thinking about monetization was generally not accepted, and then, when software production became a big business, Open Source was already free of charge by inertia.



In the bars and saloons, the United States has long offered a "free lunch" for anyone who buys at least one drink. "Dinner" was usually very salty (ham, chips, salty crackers) and caused an overwhelming desire to drink it with beer. Or two. Click! - mousetrap with free cheese worked. Thanks to “free lunches”, the abbreviation TANSTAAFL is firmly established in American English - There is no such thing as a free lunch. In the case of the “free” software, the mousetrap is not only a consumer, but also a manufacturer. Many people seriously believe that making money from their programs or author's works is an unworthy practice. It is as if there is something worthy in filing the information space with tons of advertising, begging for donations and looking like cheap imitations of advertised commercial competitors.



Let's look at things honestly. Indeed, any content can be free only in two cases - if its cost price is zero (a magician in a blue helicopter flew to us and patched the core for free, yeah ...) or if its author consciously decided to give it to people. I was not forced, as it is now, because consumers prefer to suffer, prick and eat a free cactus, namely, he decided, having all the opportunities to get a decent reward. This happens very rarely. In all other cases, the “free” product is either paid in advance, for example, when it was created by the state for taxpayers' money, or by independent authors for sponsors' and philanthropists' money, or paid indirectly, most often through advertising, or not paid by everyone and not completely, forcing some consumers pay for others (freemium) or forcing authors to work for free (Open Source).



Yes, precisely forcing. Nobody, of course, stands with a stick at a programmer who commits patches to interesting projects on GitHub in the evenings after work. But no one asks him if he wants to get paid for it. And he wants, believe me. But almost no dreams of such happiness. And in the mornings, sleepy, goes to the unloved job to earn a living, and at night to do his favorite thing, because everyone is used to the fact that Open Source can always be downloaded for free.



It simply can not affect the quality. No matter how open development fans embellish the situation, Open Source is able to do proprietary software only in two cases - when programmers and administrators write for the same programmers and admins, that is, in fact, for themselves, and when an open development is supported by a large company or organization earning money for something else.



But there are not enough large organizations at all, and there are dozens of niches about which programmers and administrators have a very vague idea. And here Open Source unconditionally loses to proprietary software. At best, there are “analogs” of closed commercial programs that are always trying to catch up with the functionality of rich competitors, consistently lagging behind several versions and only occasionally surpassing the original in detail. And the design and usability of the graphical interface of open source programs is mediocre, if lucky, and nightmarish, if not. This is the inevitable fee for "free". There is no free lunch.



And here is the text editor mentioned in the title? Since I started to bother about licenses and almost completely migrated to Ubuntu (since there is no need to use any highly specialized proprietary software), I have been looking for Impeccable Text Editor. I was looking, of course, primarily among the free software. Vim and Emacs are probably excellent editors, but it is advisable to get used to them from childhood, as to an exquisitely smelly cheese or herring "stuffed." Who is used to - cannot live without them, who is not - turns up his nose. Jedit is good, but my eyes (My eyes !! 11) do not tolerate rough fonts. Geany is good and smart, but young (many things are not even in the form of plug-ins yet) and sad. E Text Editor is also not bad, but it is still unfinished and, despite the enthusiasm of the textmate textmate, of which he is a clone, did not impress my imagination. Well, and so on ... In general, I spat and hung the standard Gedit plugins that make it relatively bearable.



A few days ago, in a random comment on the topic about the release of a new version of Notepad ++, I found out about Sublime Text. It has almost everything that the soul desires, right out of the box. Projects, fuzzy search, multiple editing, snippets, autocompletion, autoindent, fullscreen mode (two types of fullscreen mode!), Keyboard shortcuts - everything works exactly the way I like it. He is comfortable. He is handsome. He is faster than Geany!



And it costs 59 bucks. And I’ll probably buy it, although it can be used free of charge in principle. It could have open source, cost ten or five and be a de facto standard if it was customary to pay for Open Source. But pay is not accepted. Free lunch, his mother! The best, thoughtful and convenient cross-platform text editor is practically unknown to anyone just because the market is destroyed by “free” software.



You have to pay! Only when this thought will firmly sit in the minds of most, information finally becomes free. Only when only marginals will download everything for free will it be possible to dismantle licensed fences without fear of offending the authors. If you pay almost everything, then the prices will be lower, and you will be able to lay out the sources without fear of being left with nothing. Only by ceasing to be free, Open Source can be truly free. Free from advertising, from the policies of corporate sponsors and from the threat of quietly bending, due to the fact that several active developers are tired of drawing thousands of passive consumers on their backsides.



We have already got used to resist the copywriting, to invent new and new ways to circumvent their bans, to vote for pirate parties. It would be nice just to resist pirates and freeloaders. Author's content should be free, open to changes, forks and improvements, cheap and accessible. It will be so only if the author is not considered a goon, who does not want to distribute everything for free, but a consumer who does not want to pay a penny price.



The habit of freebies drives us into the same dead end, as the desire of copywriters to infinity prolong the term of copyright protection, inflate prices and indicate to us what is possible and what cannot be done with the content that we seem to have bought. It is necessary to change the culture. We have reached the point of complete absurdity. A person who refuses proprietary software and uses only open and free of charge proudly declares that he “supports” the Open Source movement! Supports! Sumptuously! Already with such support Open Source will not disappear! The person downloads free music from the musician's site, and, if he is in a good mood, makes a “donation”. And then let's call donations in general any payment for any product or service? Immediately feel cool patrons. Ride on the bus - donated to the driver. I went to the supermarket - donated to the cashier. How is a musician worse than a driver and a cashier?



When we downloaded something for free, we owe it to the one who created it. We do not “support” open source software by simply changing Windows to Ubuntu, and Word to Writer. We take a loan and do not pay, using the fact that no one can punish us for it. We don’t “sacrifice” a couple of bucks from a master’s shoulder to a musician, we pay off debts. If the author does not try to forbid us to download his work for free, this does not mean that he does not want to receive a fair payment for his work. He just "relaxed and gets pleasure." There is nothing left for him.



Okay, are these all the emotions that you specifically suggest? - you ask. Just two things. If you produce content, stop having fun and pretend that you don’t need money at all. Write on your site how much time you spent on development, how much money on tools, summarize, set a price, show the expense and income. Let people see how much they owe you. Most of those who swing for free are not greedy or evil. Just taught them to freebies. They sincerely believe that if you don’t force them to agree with multi-page licenses, don’t incriminate lawyers and the police, don’t threaten with fines, then you don’t have to pay. Tell them that it is not so! Explain that donations begin only when the author has already received in full. Tell us why the bugs do not last so long, why a new album or a new book does not come out. Just tell. Do not complain and beg, but do not do a good happy bad game.



If you are a consumer, pay! Just pay at least a few dollars. You have taken advantage of the labor of others. How much do you have on the screw of music, software, movies? Pull your conscience off the leash, let him gnaw, may force you to return at least part of the debt. The author wants money, he just does not have the strength and nerves to knock them out of you. Every penny paid directly to the author is a nail in the coffin of copiers, much more tangible than a visit to thepiratebay.se or a volley from a low-orbit ion gun on riaa.com