Freedom or Power?

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.

Comments

freedom or power

[Niksie3]

all the same, freedom == knowledge == power. Power == freedom.

I have the Freedom/Power to license a piece of code, I have the **RIGHT** to license a piece of code. some people don't understnad that, I won't say names but you know who they are **COUGH** DMCA **COUGH**, SSCA **COUGH***

On the nature of power

[John Miles]

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."

And forcing me to choose a license that meets the FSF's approval is an attempt to assert what?

Could it be...?

Power?

I'm impressed. That single-sentence excerpt, by itself, says more about its author than Mao's entire Little Red Book did.