Napster != Open Source Larry

Napster != Open Source

Larry Wall, developer of the Perl language, has a similar perspective. "Open source should be about giving away things voluntarily," he says. "When you force someone to give you something, it's no longer giving, it's stealing. Persons of leisurely moral growth often confuse giving with taking."

I personally think there is something to the argument that Napster does increase sales as people will
listen to a lot more music and buy more music, but there has to be a middle ground where it's possible to enforce artist's rights as well as enable music lover's.

Posted by Bill Stilwell at May 22, 2000 12:00 AM