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Freedom or Power?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the turkey-or-ham dept.

mpawlo writes: "As reported by Gnuheter, a new essay published by Bradley M. Kuhn and Richard M. Stallman carries the title "Freedom or Power?". The authors state something that we might have suspected from essays from Kuhn and Stallman before, but now is a little more clear, if still ambiguous: "However, one so-called freedom that we do not advocate is the "freedom to choose any license you want for software you write". We reject this because it is really a form of power, not a freedom." The essay is interesting in the light of an earlier essay published by Eric S Raymond. ... Tim O'Reilly started the debate with his weblog of July 28, 2001: My definition of freedom zero." Ed. note - FWIW, Stallman and Kuhn are right. Not necessarily in their advocacy of the GPL, but certainly in their description of whether licensing is freedom for the developer or power over others. All licensing stems from copyright law, a completely man-made creation whose sole purpose is to give the writer of creative works artificial power over what others do with those works. If you take the canonical description of freedom ("Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins") and apply it to software, it's pretty clear that true freedom would not let one person control what another does with software.

4 of 521 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Offending the moderates by mangu · · Score: 4, Informative
    MS kept saying, once you start down the path of the GPL, there's no going back.


    But, wait, doesn't the copyright owner have the power to put the work in the public domain? Or under another licence?

    Is there anything in the GPL that says I can't give my work to Peter under the GPL and to Paul under the BSD licence? (And to Bill under the MS-EULA, of course... :)

  2. Remember .... by taniwha · · Score: 2, Informative

    not everyone who reads or posts to /. is in the US ... so, in this context at least, the contents of our constitution are not an absolute

  3. Re:Interesting read, but you're forgetting one thi by AmbushBug · · Score: 2, Informative

    If I understand correctly, you actually don't have property rights with regards to software. That's the whole point of copyrights and patents - you don't own ideas, the public does, but you are granted a limited monopoly for a short period of time as an incentive. Remember, software is not really a physical thing like a car or a piece of beef jerky - its a bunch of information.

  4. Knackering my Mod points... by sparkz · · Score: 2, Informative

    But I've got to reply here - I can't mod everybody down !!!

    What is this attitude? I didn't totally get RMS' argument, sure, but ESR's really made the case final.

    I can only recommend that you read the article by ESR before you start agreeing with him !!!

    --
    Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re