Python obfuscation

[Paul Rubin]

"The Eternal Squire" <eternalsquire at comcast.net> writes:
> Without copyright, how could one possibly earn a living writing a
> novel?  

This guy seems to be doing ok:  http://craphound.com
His publishers are the only ones allowed to sell his novels commercially,
but you can download them all and print them out noncommercially for
your own personal enjoyment or to share with your friends.  No obfuscation
is needed.

> And I submit that many ISD's are only a single person burning with
> that one software idea of a lifetime, the equivalent of the Great
> American Novel.  Are we to punish that impulse by denying that
> person a legal monopoly on that idea?

You know, there's lots of people who would like to make a living as
actors or musicians or novelists or whatever, and maybe they even have
enough talent and skill to do it, but for whatever reason it's just
not in the cards for them, copyright or not.  So they do other things
instead.  Maybe it's also not in the cards for some people to be
programmers even though they'd like to be, so they do other things
instead too.  For the most part, I don't feel any sense of tragedy
about this.

> I believe piracy is bad for everyone:  the consumer, the writer, and
> the country as a whole.  I don't oppose copyleft, but then, I don't
> oppose copyright either.  Let's distribute the former for free, and
> honor the need for the writer of the latter to earn a living.

Everyone has the right to try to earn a living from programming, but
no one is entitled to be guaranteed success at it.