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A comment on A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music. Parent comment

Re:A brief history of why artists are no longer making a liv... by pmoriarty on Thursday March 21, 2019 @10:47PM (#19459239)
"> If you don't think artists should be paid, then neither should programmers."

"Pretty sure that RMS is advocating for that kind of vision."

That's a common misconception. He actually has no problem with programmers making money.

The GNU Project has an article on this, which starts by saying:

"Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible--just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding.

"Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can."

More here:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

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Re:A brief history of why artists are no longer making a liv... by baroffoos on Friday March 22, 2019 @01:59AM (#19459958)
Its a kind of pointless quote though because the GPL requires that after the first person buys your software they can legally put it up online for free and now you have lost your sales.
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Re:A brief history of why artists are no longer making a liv... by chii on Friday March 22, 2019 @12:40AM (#19459661)
> Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can.

with subtext being > "good luck if somebody attempts to undercut your prices though."

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Re:A brief history of why artists are no longer making a liv... by microtherion on Friday March 22, 2019 @04:28AM (#19460488)
Yes, I'm familiar with that, but if said software is distributed under the GPL, one essentially gets to charge for the first sale. So programmers get paid for e.g. contract work, or custom one-offs, but not for writing retail software.

The corresponding model for artists is the Wu-tang clan selling the sole copy of their album to Martin Shkreli.

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