Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Copyfree

[Fabio Pesari]

On 02/25/2016 06:08 PM, Aaron Wolf wrote:
>
> I didn't say they were insane extremist anarchists. If they were, I
> wouldn't associate with them at all. They are specifically people who
> oppose copyright and patent laws, not *all* laws. (which is my position
> too, I just want copyright and patent abolition to be paired with (A)
> prohibition of DRM and (B) mandatory source release for published works,
> and the Copyfree folks actually agree with this, per our discussions;
> they oppose DRM but just see that as an issue beyond the Copyfree stuff).

Your position is also mine, and for this reason I do not understand why
you would associate your project with Copyfree as a concept, since I
wouldn't.

My issue with it is that you are giving Copyfree some visibility it
doesn't deserve. It's a ripoff of older ideas, it is incompatible with
both free software and open source and its politics do not reflect the
real world.

> Yes, this stuff is political, more than OSI, but it's not *that*
> political. The primary reason it isn't just an emphasis on public domain
> is because of the legal quirks of the inadequacies of public domain in
> practice today. Absolutely *nothing* that is "Copyfree" is any better
> for proprietary advocates or any worse for software freedom than public
> domain. The Copyfree licenses do nothing to promote proprietary software
> any more than public domain software does.

Public domain makes a strong political statement: a refusal to partake
in the copyright system, including attribution.

If making a political statement against copyright is the point, I don't
see why not go all the way.

> It's not especially healthy. It's valuing principle over practical
> concerns. They want no place in which copyright interferes with software
> freedom *even* if the interference is a copyleft tactic protecting
> freedom by blocking proprietization.
> 
> This is a political value question: do we support *stopping* proprietary
> software even if it *hurts* free software by causing incompatibilities?
> I say "hmm, tough question, but I lean toward 'yes' better to accept the
> incompatibility-side-effects in order to block proprietary software".
> The Copyfree folks say "better to accept the side-effect of proprietary
> derivatives in order to maximize compatibility for those of us using
> free software". That view isn't crazy.

That view is crazy, because incompatibility is not caused by copyleft,
but rather by developers.

If everyone used "GPL or any later version" from the beginning and if
nobody created their own licenses in order to avoid the GPL,
incompatibilities would never have arisen.

Incompatibilities arise only in two cases (I can think of):

1) The developers don't use the "or any later version" clause
2) The developers want to merge GPL code into permissive code

Reason 2 cannot be allowed for obvious reasons (that code can go into
proprietary software at any point), but you can always fork a
permissively licensed project into a GPL project, so this is a moot point.

Reason 1 is unfortunate when it happens due to ignorance (people who
just stick a LICENSE file in their repository) or when the original
contributors are unreachable, I give you that.

But what about those developers who intentionally use previous versions
of the GPL to allow corporations to implement things like DRM, SaaSS and
Tivoization? That is done with bad intent, and they are entirely to
blame for that, not copyleft.