permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

I do hope that after this David Holmgren is kind enough to leave his new
writings on his website, though I wouldn't blame him if he withdraws them.

He has generously offered his ideas for free instead of only selling them in
his CD-ROM and book. That's pretty nice. Under his conditions, anyone can
benefit from, use, and build on his ideas for free. He's just asking that if
we copy, incorporate, or redistribute his actual words--the product of his
labor--we pay for the work he has done for us. Sounds fair to me.  I'll bet
he'd even give permission for someone copy some of it to a website for free.

When someone offers me a gift that has conditions attached, if I can't
respect his wishes I feel I have no right to take the gift.

We all know how easy it is to hack copy-protection. I suspect David is not
trusting proprietary technology so much as he's trusting us to respect his
wishes.  

Toby