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Comment by unalone | Hacker News Reader

Harry Potter is first and foremost a book series. Anything more is based on the author's benevolence or interests.

Once Harry Potter is published, it's out there and it's done. The series lies in those printed novels. That doesn't change. If Rowling wants to let people add more, she can, but it is certainly not a requirement.

Similarly, I absolutely have the right to suspend a software project of mine and leave it hanging, if that's what I want. Perhaps I don't want something associated with my name being sullied by other people's work. Maybe I want it to be associated with me and only me.

The fan was terrific, but he tried to make money. Rowling told him she was against that and he did it anyway. So it wasn't like she lied to him.

By the way: I downvote people as soon as they ask about why they're being downvoted, unless they're giving a good rationale for why they shouldn't be downvoted. Maybe that's why the negativism?

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Of course you can suspend or erase any software you write at any time. I believe this changes if your software gains widespread cultural importance and acclaim. There are responsibilities that go along with creating something so important. I swear, if Take Me Out To The Ball Game was written today, we wouldn't be able to sing at baseball games because of copyright.

Happy Birthday is copyright, and people using it in movies pay a royalty.

Find me the thing that says that if I make software, I lose rights to it once it gains "importance and acclaim." Perhaps I can't ERASE software, but are you saying I can't stop IMPROVING it just because it becomes big? Because that's just silly.

Find me the thing that says that if I make software, I lose rights to it once it gains "importance and acclaim."

There is not anything that says this, that's just the way I believe it should be, for many reasons. Put simply, I don't think anyone has the right or the ability to keep complete control over something as large and important as Harry Potter.

Perhaps I can't ERASE software, but are you saying I can't stop IMPROVING it just because it becomes big?

Never. My claim is that you shouldn't be able to stop others from improving on it. I know definitions of "improve" are going to vary across the board, but the Encylopedia example is something that is an obvious improvement. What if Linus didn't want anyone else to improve on Linux?

That's fair enough. That's essentially what I'm arguing too, but in reverse. I guess that's just a matter of opinion.

What if Linus didn't want anyone else to improve on Linux?

Then it would have died out in favor of some open source thing. But it was Linus's choice. Say a writer could gain a massive popularity surge by open-sourcing her world and characters. She'd have an edge over Rowling because Rowling won't do that. But either way, it's not the law allowing her to get ahead, it's the market. If Rowling is ignored for some more open world, then the market has spoken. If, however, her ideas stay big despite her retaining outright control, then there's no incentive to take them from her, and my opinion is that it's morally wrong to.

If Linus had kept Linux closed source, people would have still been perfectly within their rights to write a manual about how to write programs for that operating system as long as they didn't sign a NDA. I doubt anyone who read HP signed an NDA...

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