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Re: [Octal-dev] distro issues, etc.


From: Neil Nelson
Subject: Re: [Octal-dev] distro issues, etc.
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 21:58:20 -0700

Stever Mosher wrote:

>        Not entirely. GNU wishes a state of no copyright law, and no
> intellectual property law. The best that can be done is to emulate that
> within the given copyright laws and IP laws. I find this rather mature,
> the other option is to ignore the existing laws and steal information --
> which doesn't work out very well.
>         Personally, I *like* the GPL, and I wish that it was known to be
> enforceable. At the same time, I have nothing but respect for the decision
> *not* to release under the GPL -- it's _your_ choice as a coder.

I just looked at the GPL that is a fairly long agreement.  But let us look
at  http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/fsf-forms/conditions.text

The options are:

* Assigning copyright.

* Keeping the copyright

* Public domain.

I.e., I cannot just declare GPL and have the code distributed with Octal
from GNU.  Rather, the strongly suggested option is to assign the copyright
to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., who then has the copyright to enforce
their rather detailed agreement or vision of copyright law.  The result is
not against intellectual property, but the use of intellectual property
against other interests in that intellectual property, just as any
copyright holder would.  The only difference is the agenda of Free Software
Foundation, Inc.  Freedom is not conformance to someone else's notion of
freedom; it is to be simply free.

My alternative only requires reasonable notification of where the software
has come from, which seems, in comparison to GPL, very free.  If we want
to be free, then let us just be responsibly free.  And then additionally,
I might agree to GPL, but then I would need to track down the SoX authors.
This minor detail makes GPL useless for other than completely original work,
a conception of software against modern notions of software development.
Modern software must not need to reinvent the wheel, and instead, quickly
assemble together other authors' software from a variety of sources.  This
is the great advantage of open-source software.  The originality is built
upon the prior work of many others allowing easily, rapidly scaled
software complexity.

Neil Nelson




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