Originally Posted by
Manalto
So stealing a little is OK, but stealing a lot isn't? Unfortunately, "commercial" has already been defined as selling for profit; we don't get to modify that definition to suit ourselves. How much time (or money) a person has spent making copies of someone else's design is immaterial and certainly doesn't justify its theft.
What about this: A woman buys a pattern for a dress, takes that pattern and fabric which she has purchased, to a dressmaker, who makes the dress, using the purchased pattern. The dressmaker then charges the woman $$ to make the dress from the pattern the woman bought. Do you consider that stealing from whoever designed the pattern? Because money was made, using the pattern....money that was not paid to the designer of the pattern.
Seems to me that making items from a purchased pattern and profiting from the making of those items, is the same thing. It's not stealing to sell items one makes from a pattern one has bought and paid for. The pattern designer cannot reasonably expect to either control or profit from all the items that will be made from the pattern he/she designed.