Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Copyfree

[Aaron Wolf]

On 02/26/2016 02:48 AM, Fabio Pesari wrote:
> On 02/26/2016 06:45 AM, Aaron Wolf wrote:
>>
>> I think Snowdrift.coop can't succeed enough without copyleft in
>> practice, but these are tactical arguments still. People who believe in
>> other tactics are still welcome to participate in the discussion. In
>> this case, if the people in question were predictable, dogmatic
>> extremists, their participation would be of little value, and I wouldn't
>> encourage it. In reality, while the Copyfree website may not give this
>> impression, the folks behind that are non-extremist reasonable people
>> who participated in productive discussion.
> 
> I'm sure of it, and I trust your judgement anyway. Being willing to
> welcome people with differing views than our own is always a good thing,
> but there is a thin line between giving them a platform to speak and
> being perceived to endorse them.
> 
> In the case of Copyfree, my worry is mostly about the fact that they are
> a niche initiative, and it's a lot easier for corporations to co-opt
> Copyfree to use it to discredit not only the GPL but also Creative
> Commons licenses than to use open source for the same reasons, since
> nobody in the open source movement would not consider the Linux kernel
> or Blender "not free enough" for example.
> 
> Don't forget that after Bruce Perens created open source, he regretted
> what it became ([0]). I think that if they really are free software
> supporters, they are going to end up doing the same.
> 
> Right now, I just don't see any mention of "proprietary" or "nonfree" or
> even "closed" in their homepage, and no statements about copyright
> abolition. If they made those statements, I would take them more
> seriously, and it would be harder for corporations to co-opt them.
> 
> If anything, I found this in their policy/copyright page:
> 
>> Toward this end, the Copyfree Initiative advocates for, and supports,
>> the use of those provisions of copyright law that enable the freeing
>> of works from the monopoly restrictions of copyright law right here,
>> right now, without significant reform or abolishment.
> 
> They clearly are:
> 
> 1) Advocating to use _some_ provisions of copyright law, but not others.
> 
>    Doesn't sound like downright abolitionism to me, and it's the same
>    position as the free software movement, just without any concern for
>    those provisions which could actually protect the end users.
> 
> 2) Stating that their plan would help free works from monopoly
>    restrictions _without significant reform or abolishment_.
> 
>    Aside from this statement being clearly indifferent to copyright
>    abolitionism, it is plain false, because as we've seen, under
>    current copyright law what they promote is simply not sufficient
>    to prevent proprietary works from being created and if anything, it
>    helps them!
> 
> I've also read their page about copyleft and the only reasonable point
> they make is about incompatibility, but the solution to incompatibility
> is avoiding copyleft as much as the solution to headache is decapitation.
> 
> [0]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/02/msg01641.html
> 

FWIW, I appreciate you bringing these things up, and I *always* was
uncertain and uncomfortable about how much to emphasize this.

Publicly, my desire is to say "we welcome even folks like the Copyfree
people who others of us don't particularly agree with" but I *don't*
actually want to give them lots of promotion or anything.

That said, I think your points here are very good and that I can
actually bring them to the Copyfree folks and get them to change and
clarify their site to make it more clear that they oppose proprietary
stuff and etc. I.e. I think they don't want to give anyone the
impression that they are apologists for proprietary terms, and I think
they would be okay getting pushed to change some of the wording on their
site.

I also think that, especially with them just being busy and less
involved in recent months, we will *not* continue implying that we have
any formal partnership (since it isn't really even an active org to
partner with).