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A comment on Proprietary Software Is Often Malware. Parent comment

Re:Proprietary Software Is Often Malware by umvi on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @03:26PM (#26006151)
> So if someone says "I won't give you X software unless you pay Y dollars" that is fine

How can you say that though if someone can just get a copy from a peer without paying you? People just go around the paywall and grab a free copy without payment which is why DRM exists at all. So then I make it so the software has to connect to a server to check if you've paid for it, and now suddenly that's mistreating the user?

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Re:Proprietary Software Is Often Malware by ethanwillis on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @11:32PM (#26010633)
Having software connect to a server to check if you've paid for it is still allowed. You just have to provide source code. However, you don't have to provide the source code for the software running on the remote server.
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Re:Proprietary Software Is Often Malware by ethanwillis on Tuesday February 02, 2021 @11:34PM (#26010644)
In either case this is all a moot point because you don't have to go full GNU to provide source code to paying customers. This still happens in some enterprise situations with contracts in place to assign legal liability for sharing the code for free to other people while still respecting the freedom of the software users to have access to the source code.
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