Re: [Fsfe-uk] Young Greens moving on FS

[Ian Lynch]

On Tue, 2004-11-23 at 14:32, Dale Mellor wrote:
> Ian Lynch writes:
>  > On Tue, 2004-11-23 at 09:20, root wrote:
>  > > Mark Preston writes:
>  > >  
>  > >  > You are almost certainly correct when you state that "many Free 
> Software 
>  > >  > folks are quite happy with Copyright". The Gnu GPL would not be 
>  > >  > necessary if there was no copyright laws that could be infringed. The 
>  > >  > Gnu project could happily continue IMHO if copyright laws were 
> abolished.
>  > > 
>  > > 
>  > > WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG 
>  > > 
>  > > Without copyright laws M****S*ft could and would take firefox, bundle
>  > > it with their OS under their own brand name, [details relevant to the 
>  > > context were snipped here...]
>  > 
>  > But with no copyright at all you could then take whatever they did and
>  > rebrand it to whatever you wanted. While there is copyright law you need
>  > ways of licensing that maximise freedom without allowing completely
>  > unfair exploitation. Ok you might not get the source code (but how
>  > likely is the source to stay secret if anyone could leak it leagally?)
> 
> 
>     It is not being able to get the source code that is precisely the
>     problem. MS could still force their employees into a legally
>     binding contract that forbids them from giving away MS source
>     code, beit derived from free software or not.

How would they enforce that if there was no copyright law? Ok, I go work
for MS, take as much source code as I can and distribute it. MS sack me,
maybe even sue me but it doesn;t do them much good because the genie is
out of the bottle and with no copyright law once out you can't put it
back in.

-- 
Ian Lynch <address@hidden>
ZMS Ltd