Copyright vs. Copyleft (was: Re: [Fsfe-uk] Young Greens moving on FS)

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, 2004-11-23 at 14:21 +0000, Lee Braiden wrote:
> Well, GNU defines free software as (among other things) the ability to
> change the software.  As I understand it, public domain software could
> be adapted and distributed in binary form, without providing access to
> the sourcecode. Therefore, the ability to change would be lost.

Yeah. It's the same with software licensed under the BSD-style licences
though; it's still free software, just not protected copyleft-style from
being proprietised in the future. That's the point Mark is trying to
make to you. If you think of BSD-licensed software as behaving the same
as public domain software, you can't really go far wrong (attribution
and moral rights are where it differs).

> And, as GNU says, "A program is free software if users have all of these
> freedoms."  Seems like you're using a looser definition of free software?

No, he's just applying it to the software in front of him. Public domain
software distributed as binaries would be not be free software, really.

Your point is that copylefted free software is preferable to
not-copylefted, because there is an extra guarantee that the freedom is
protected. It doesn't really affect the freeness of the software, and
some free software users (BSD-licence advocates, for example) would
argue that it's unnecessary.

Cheers,

Alex.