Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Copyfree

[Aaron Wolf]

On 02/25/2016 10:04 AM, Fabio Pesari wrote:
> 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.
> 

For background info, I first encountered the Copyfree folks in a debate
about copyleft where I assumed they were being typical assholes who
promote and shill for proprietary stuff. It was interesting that in the
end, we turned out to be in agreement about wanting to see the end of
copyrights, patents, and proprietary restrictions. After further
discussion, it became clear that the particular folks were actually
reasonable and not totally extremists (as shown by their willingness to
help us, an aligned project in terms of freedom but being copyleft.

People who were totally dogmatic would reject us because they were
copyleft. But the more I've talked to people in the community, the more
I find reasonable people who basically agree with the copyfree
perspective. They see copyleft as about enforcement, see most copyleft
software having no ability to enforce practically.

For example: Another one of our advisors is Mike Linksvayer who is on
the Board of the Software Freedom Conservancy, advocates for their GPL
enforcement, helped with copyleft.org, and yet he's sympathetic to the
Copyfree viewpoint as well. See
http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2013/11/25/upgrade-to-0/ (the rest of his
blog is interesting reading too).

The thing is, the Copyfree people *do* support CC0 and public domain.
The primary reason they don't focus on public domain is in fact
*practical* because there are legal concerns about the practical matter
of getting things to be recognized as public domain, so they advocate
the most effect license terms that are comparably unrestricted.

In the end, most of the advising and discussion with them when they were
active was on purely practical matters that didn't even relate to
licensing. They're nice aligned people regardless of the Copyfree thing.
We had some differences of opinion about the Copyfree stuff but agreed
that Snowdrift.coop would respect those users who have that political
view. It's not just that there's these couple Copyfree folks who are
some fringe. There's lots of people with some sympathies there who
grudgingly go with copyleft because they agree about the tactic but
somewhat dislike it.

Copyfree represents the critique of copyleft that isn't coming from a
pro-proprietary view. We like the idea of including diverse viewpoints
and not being just an echo chamber. We found the Copyfree people to be
sensible and reasonable.

> 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.
> 

That's too simplistic. Copyleft *inherently* causes incompatibility by
its very mechanism. Anyone denying this is just in denial. Our page
describes how important it is to *minimize* this side-effect by
encouraging everyone to use GPLv3+ compatible licenses. But that doesn't
mean this is causing the incompatibility.

Sure, people should use "or later" clause, but there's copyleft licenses
besides the GPL even. At any rate, *I* think that we can minimize
incompatibility without giving up the copyleft tactic and that's what I
advocate for. But I don't think everyone who takes any other view than
mine is automatically crazy. There's merit to their view, it's simply
not crazy.

> 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.
> 

Yeah, and I agree with you. But *reasonable* non-crazy people who aren't
advocating for proprietary terms don't completely agree. We can build a
healthy community around the idea that you see the world as black and
white and treat everyone who disagrees with you at all as all being the
same and all either corrupt or crazy. Sometimes you say, "there are
people with compatible overall values that want to help our mission, and
we include them and allow them to have a voice as long as they treat us
reasonably too and their involvement is an overall benefit to the
broader mission".

I'd much rather draw the line where we make it clear that the people
advocating for proprietary software are the problem and not push out
those free software advocates who have different tactical views or
priorities than us.