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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.
ends where my face begins.
The fundamental problem with anarchism lies in this statement. Open Source's GPL itself requires a heirarchy to maintain it, although it was designed to fight a heirarchy.
You need a body of people who act similarly to the RIAA or whomever, investigating people's GPL licenses and behaviors with Open Source software and its derivatives.
Of course, the "GPL police" would wind up chasing large corporations or developers who wish to appropriate GPL'd tech in closed source projects. This would make them rather ineffective, due to the financial disparities between the OSS movement and corporations.
So, OSS is going to have to do what M$ does, and that is buy into the government through a lobbying system.
Goat sex free since 2001
true freedom would mean I can't be thrown in jail for murdering a bus full of kids.
Not able to license however I want? Get real.
Look. I'll be the first to advocate the use of free/oss software. Stuff that the community can use and build upon. In fact, in more than just software, I'm in favor of nothing really stopping people from doing things for the common good.
However. If I write software, with my time, and my effort, then nobody is going to tell ME under what terms I may let someone else use it. Period.
I'm not a fan of over-broad IP law, but I'm also not an advocate of ditching it altogether.
I'm not totally opposed to communism.. but that's basically what Stallman wants. Communist hippie software (literally). Great. Good for him. Communies can be fantastic in the right circumstances, with the right group of people.
But the majority of the world is based upon power. Supply and demand, money, greed, etc.
I don't understand RMS's obsession with powerless freedom.
Any freedom that means something is, in some way, an expression of power.
The freedom to own my own home and house my family is meaningless unless I can exercise the power to keep others out.
The freedom to speak out against the government is empty unless there is power to prevent government censorship.
The GPL's guarantees of freedom to take, use, modify and distribute source code are meaningless without the power to enforce them.
Freedom without power is no freedom at all.
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.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
What is freedom if not power?
Who appointed Stallman God? In his own way he is just as bad as Bill Gates, for they are both trying to dictate the terms under which we can distribute the software we write, or use the software we use that has been written by others.
I reject both of them for trying to control what I do with the code I write. When I write something, _I_ should have control under the provisions it is licensed under.
When I use software from others I have to make a choice about what license provisions I will agree to. These days I have a lot of choices. I like it that way.
I am perfectly capable of making my own decisions in this regard - and I cannot stomach the idea of others trying to make them for me.
In the US Constitution, Copyrights and Patents exist to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". If, due to any circumstances, they do not do that, they have no reason to exist.
It seems that some debate is needed to insure that those mechanisms still serve their original purpose. When a licence is used just to ensure a continuing flow of profits, without any new works being created, the Copyright or Patent is, technically, forfeit.
Rather than debate over the types of licences developers are allowed to choose for the software they write, we should instead look at whether it is OK to prevent developers from writing software.
As currently set up I can apply for a license [read Patent] that prevents others from using an idea. This is a much more fundamental issue that the debate over what rights a developer is willing to grant users in a software license. After all, there is nothing to prevent other software developers from producing a competing product providing we solve the patent issue.
At that point, if you do not like the fact that Eric releases some software with a proprietary license, anyone is free to create a competitive product and GPL it. Then the users can decide. Right now, with patents, creating a compatible clone can be impossible.
Author, "Software Craftsmanship The New Imperative" Addison-Wesley (C) 2002
I think RMS and the FSF are going to start losing ground, because they're going to fall into the trap of many politicians who want to change the world: they're going to offend the moderates.
I'm speaking as a USian, of course. As everyone knows, despite the media's obsession with polarized (right and left) politics, the US population is really a vast pool of people with relatively moderate views. Sure, some of them are sharply polarized about *issues* (abortion rights, the economy, whatever), but by and large, they're in the middle of the political spectrum. The first thing a candidate does is hit up his support of the issues while trying to not appear too far to one side, lest he offend the moderates.
There are a lot of people who like the GPL, because it prevents proprietary lock-in and helps create a sense of empowerment and community. The problem, I feel, is that once you put the GPL in your code, you're putting it (and yourself) into the "camp" of the FSF. You're now essentially signing on to the RMS/FSF game plan, even if all you wanted was to see your code not get folded into a proprietary product, and let as many people as possible play with things.
MS kept saying, once you start down the path of the GPL, there's no going back. I hate to say it, but maybe they're right. For all their talk about a software "ecosystem", contrasted against stuff like this, it makes me think they (MS) might have been right after all.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
after having read this essay, the author strikes me as a person who would order a sandwich for lunch without lettuce, gets a sandwich with lettuce, would proceed to eat it, then demand not to be charged for the sandwich, as he did not order lettuce on it.
---------
Fuck you, motherfucker. Fuck yous to: Rob "Taco-Snotter" Malda, Homos, Kowboi Kneel, and RMS.
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.
This oft-overlooked distinction is crucial. Freedom is being able to make decisions that affect mainly you. Power is being able to make decisions that affect others more than you. If we confuse power with freedom, we will fail to uphold real freedom.
This is just plain stupid. Everything anyone does affects others in some sense. Who it mainly affects is a matter of opinion.
In essence, Stallman & Kuhn are saying "you do not have the right to tell others what to do with your software". However, by making that statement themselves, they are asserting that very right for themselves. Do as I say, not as I do.
These statements are no better than Microsoft's leverage with the OEMs forcing them to not change the boot loaders; not included non-MS software and other non-competitive measures.
All other things being equal, GPL software should win out over proprietary licenses on cost and ease of administration (license tracking, etc.) alone. We only need a level playing field -- not one tipped one way or the other by Microsoft OR the FSF.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The editorial note is fundamentally misguided. Some freedoms are also powers. By opposing other people's freedom to choose licenses, Stallman is also pushing for *his* power.
You can't just draw a line and say "these freedoms are really freedoms, others aren't". Free speech is the power to hurt people's feelings; freedom of association is the power to form unions. If we allow people to choose terms for their software, they can, indeed, do so. This doesn't mean it's not a form of freedom; it just means that Stallman is dogmatic, rather than philosophical, about freedom. The freedoms he wants are the only ones he will recognize; this is no different from other people who recognize only those freedoms their dogma encourages.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Or should the RIAA and MPAA and all their friends be allowed to write licenses that are contrary to the public interest.
I'm not sure I agree with Stallman about all which licenses are contrary to the public interest, but I agree they exist, and you should not have the "freedom" to use copyright law to enforce them....
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
I've always considered Perl's Artistic license to be in the truest spirit of freedom.
GNU wants to give you freedom.
Nobody has the freedom to do things that are harmful to others. Nobody complains about not having the "freedom" to kill people, because that's not a freedom people have.
Similarly, GNU grants you every freedom except one - you can't take freedom away from other people by relicensing the software with restrictive conditions that don't give the people the same freedom you had.
To take freedom away from people, (i.e. not giving them the freedom that you had) is not a freedom - it's an issue of power. Just as taking someone's life or property away from them is not a freedom, taking someone's freedom away from them is also not a freedom with respect to software.
So it's not that GNU is "denying" you the freedom to license as you see fit, they just want to deny you the ability to take freedom away from other people, which itself isn't a freedom.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Almost everyone of the "RMS should mind his own business" posts here ignores the key argument that he makes. That freedom cannot be limited only to the producer, but also must be extended to the consumer (the code user here). This cannot simply be a bad choice one vs bad choice two, but needs to extend to some of the realities of the world. While it may be simple to say, "well, I have the freedom to make my own software" (which for obvious reasons isn't true for the vast majority of people) is false becase of the power pattents grant.
They are arbitrary, not some divine (or as Rand would say, nature) given right. Say we live in a world where the software producer has total "freedom" to do what he or she would like. O'Riley and ERS would say that no one should have the "power" to take their right to this property away from them. What if the software or hardware pioneers had placed a pattent on a logic gate, or the word proccessor, or the browser, or any number of other broad areas like this. Think of how it would impact the rest of society, this untaped knowledge and technology that is now held from the public behind the iron bars of pattent and property. Sure, in theory I have the ability to say, I don't want to use product ABC with license requirements XYZ, but in pratice no such ability exists, as I must also sustain myself physically (food shelter, etc come to mind).
The reality is that our actions inharently effect others, and the (IMHO) simple way of looking at property, code in this case, as comming with a absolute freedom/power to decide how others use it not only makes little sense philosophically, but also pratically.
(sorry for the typos by the way)
RMS,
/. community agree with you, people/corporations ought to open up certain projects, as open source is good for the customer - but the notion that somehow software developers are somehow morally obligated to GPL their work is completely nuts.
:)
Please review Locke. People have property rights. If I put my efforts into thing X I have property rights to thing X and thus it is morally permissible for me, not you to decide how to distribute X, if at all.
I, and many others here in the
The ideals behind socialisms, either those of government or those of software, do not work. Without the ability to distribute property (of which software is a type) as one sees fit, one loses much economic incentive to develop in the first place.
Please RMS, check your ego just a little bit and town down the sensationalism, its starting to get rather tired.
Besides, some of my code is far to ugly to ever be open-sourced
Cordially,
Andrew Murray University of Washington
If you think at all like me, then your answers are yes, yes, no. I think that if you buy a toy, then you should be able to take it apart and see what else you can make it do. If you buy Windows, you should be able to sell it to someone else after you are done using it. Quoting a paragraph from a book should be fair use.
And yet the Tivo usage agreement says something about no reverse engineering or disassembling. Microsoft does not let you sell copies of Windows, even if you no longer use it. The third example is a right of consumers that is respected by volumes of law. How are they all similar? In every case the author releases their work under a restrictive license. In all three cases I think the restriction should not be legally binding. This means that I think that creators should not be allowed to release their work under any license they choose. I think there are restrictions that should not be enforced, and license "agreements" that I believe do not mean anything. This is what RMS is saying.
We could equally say that freedom zero is the choice whether to rob or not to rob that convenience store across the street, and that criminals and non-criminals alike are exercising that freedom in different ways.
The underlying substrate for all human behavior is the freedom to do anything, from donating one's time to worthwy humanitarian causes to commanding troops into heinous acts of genocide. Is that range of choices part of freedom zero?
Or maybe the real freedom zero substrate is simply the laws of physics.
Stallman's definition is superior because it doesn't regress into absurd starting points; freedom is defined as a very high level intelligent behavior rooted in certain ethical principles, and that's that. That freedom is supported by lower level freedoms which allow the intelligent substrate to make choices, but these freedoms are not interesting, because these lower freedoms support all human activity alike.
What I think I see in the article is an arguement for greater social accountability. Although I'm not as radicalized to the point of out right bans I think there is a value social message in this essay. Through freedom of involvement one promotes the development of a community to properly debate and develop the implications of an idea. Software is an example of this as you cannot debate its merits without access to its code. Without this right one does not have a strong community and does not promote civil involvement.
I see this especially clear in representive democracies as there closed nature leads to little political participation. Where in the Free Software/Open Source community, with an open forum one has a very strong level of debate. This is fundamental for a proper democracy.
Now what I see in this article is that Kuhn and Stallman is an argument that one has to ensure that there is a proper forum for civil debate. By defining the licenses of software you are defining their role in the public forum. They are against non-free licenses because they hinder social growth, which is an argument you could say about many governments and countries. They do not provide the tools or encourage proper debate.
Anyways that my two cents. I hope it makes sense.
This argument by RMS is essentially about power -- HIS power. Bill Gates wants to force you to give him money in exchange for software. RMS wants to force you to give him the source code with any software you write.
Both arguments are essentially about the person doing the arguing, not the person on the other end of the transaction.
The right to choose the license under which you will release the work you do is probably the most fundamental freedom of all. Being forced to give away source code, whether you like it or not, is essentially forced bondage.
The GPL as written is an amazing document, one that does an excellent job of balancing freedoms for all parties involved in software distribution. But it doesn't suit all purposes or all situations. Trying to force it into all transactions is an abrogation of freedoms, not an extension.
No, I believe the point that the previous poster was making is that property rights are not absolute. Setting up a straw man like that does not logically make a good point. For example, if I was to own all of the realistate, does that mean you should have no where to live. Its all about finding what is overall optimal, and I don't think that would be in a system where property "rights" are weighed over people's basic needs.
Would this be a free license? Besides the obvious point that the license would become completely free at some point in the future, there's the practical matter that it will not affect RMS's ability to use my code in any way - the alternative to the RMS-free license is that I don't let anyone see the code (or not without explicit compensation in terms of salary or licensing fees). The only people affected are the 6,127,317,984 people who are neither RMS nor I.
What's the alternative? Is anyone seriously suggesting that I must publish all code I write? If so, why are programmers different from, oh, lawyers? (They must represent anyone who demands their services, without compensation.) Or doctors and dentists? Or taxi drivers. Or anyone else in the service sector?
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Freedom as being described in these articles, isn't the same freedom many of us are accustomed to. Rather, it is being declared in a very atypical self-censored form.
This freedom is more clearly labeled Freedom 0, as O'Reilly does in his original article. A limited freedom in the sense that it is a freedom of choice to be exercised; a freedom of choosing and not a freedom of acting.
Most governments have established freedom for their citizens insofar as that freedom does not interfere with that same freedom in others. But as a whole, we have really failed to analyze the types of freedom this empowers us with, and the freedoms we are limited to.
It would appear RMS is reembracing this application of freedom, in only the strictest sense.
"The freedom to swing your fist ends where my face begins" as another reader so eloquently put it. It would appear Freedom 0 is only an attempt to analyze where exactly our faces begin; where exactly do we limit the freedoms we have previously, commonly accepted. And perhaps moreso, a new obersavation asserting that our faces are far closer to the swinging fists than we previously accepted. And so, as a new standard to be raised in the light of the digital age, where new freedoms are discovered, but still under the threshold of out-dated control, in a realm that continuously promises new freedoms.
It is impossible to make that same examination-the assertion of only Freedom 0-in a Democratic Capitalistic society, such as the US, because of the many contradictions it would bring to light. Capitalism cannot suceed without the unipmeded effort to exploit the resources of the masses for personal gain.
The very freedom RMS espouses is contraindicative of a capitalist society. And in my opinion, only in the borderless benevolent anarchy of the internet can such a freedom be exhorted, as it now is.
It cannot apply to our physical world, at least not in the way commonly accepted by the various World Powers. But in the indefinite information space that is shared by all does this concept deserve its greatest relevance.
Freedom 0 can not work without common acceptance. It would be hypocritical of this limited freedom to be forced upon ourselves, without all parties first declaring a willingness to be limited by it.
So in the sense that this new formula for freedom is an expression of power itself, it is my personal opinion, that under willing acceptance it is not so.
As has been previously recounted, freedom is only an idea, an abstraction that has no basis for our real world interactions, but rather only on our choosing of them.
It is only under common acceptance of freedom, that we can govern in its name.
So too, is this also with Freedom 0.
One must withold their right to freely define freedom, to afford the benefits its acceptance can provide.
So the very concept of freedom itself is quite paradoxical, or at least contradicting, there is no question of that. It is only in its acceptance by many, does freedom really materialize in an expressable shape.
And I, for one, am all for Freedom 0
A software license is simply a contract. If the contract says, "in exchange for the use of this software, I agree not to give copies of it away" or whatever, that's not fundamentally different from a contract that says, "in exchange for the use of this software and source code, I agree to publish any changes I make to it".
In no case are you coerced into agreeing to a software license (and if you were, then the crime against freedom would be the coercion, not the license). If RMS says he's opposed to the freedom to choose a "restrictive" license (as if the GPL weren't restrictive...), then what he means to say is that he's opposed to unlimited freedom of contract.
I won't even expound on my personal feelings on the matter, I just think RMS should say what he means.
It could be a marketing scheme: release some sort of crippleware under the GPL or some other open-source license, then sell the truly powerful version. The tuxracer guys are trying to do this, and, for a more "professional" example, check www.diffpack.com
No wonder you're paranoid. You don't understand anything about XP activation. First off, installing software will not affect your activation status. Only installing/replacing hardware can do that (and you have to replace something like six different pieces before you need to reactivate). Also, you can reinstall as many times as you like. You can reactivate up to 10 times, at which point you'll need to call Microsoft on the 11th reactivation. You do not need to buy a new license, nor do anything but tell them you're reactivating, and it's done. Finally, if you bought XP for business use, why didn't your business by a license pack? Buying XP licenses in bulk (5+ licenses, I believe) allows you to not have to bother with activating the system. Perhaps you should research these things a bit more before you start in with the paranoia, eh?
It seems to me that the big argument here is about ownership and property rights, which everyone has strong opinions about, pro and con. However, maybe there is another approach that will make some sense to everyone. Maybe we should think of developers as guardians of their code instead of owners.
The analogy is that of a parent to a child. I don't own my child; she is free to live her own life. But I do have power over her. I gave birth to her and I have the responsibility to raise her until she is old enough to live on her own. As long as I am her guardian, I have the right, in fact the obligation, to make choices that affect her life. I decide what kind of education to give her, what morals to teach her, etc. And it's my right and obligation to protect her in her interactions with others. I set these limits because I want her to become a good, productive,giving member of society.
My code can be like my child (how many developers think of their code as their "baby"?) I created it and I put effort into improving it. I want it to become useful to others. Might I then also have the right to be its guardian and maintain custody of it when I release it into the world? Do I have the freedom to choose how I want others to use it? What do you think?
I don't particularly care for the wording used here. IMO, what they call "freedom" is actually power given to the end-user of the software, and "power" is power given to the producer of said software. From the looks of it, these two would rather have all power rest with the consumer and none with the producer.
"Freedom" is a bit of an amorphous concept, pretty hard for most people to define. In this case "freedom" should be defined as "free from the abuses of other peoples' power." The consumer should have some freedom to do with the software as they see fit, and the producer should also have similar freedoms. The trick is balancing the two against each other and making sure they both have equal representation in deciding how the software is used.
(Sounds an awful lot like political theory, don't it?)
The whole freedom vs. power debate is entirely relative to the position of the observer. To the folks at, say, Microsoft, an OEM license is viewed as Microsoft's "freedom" to distribute their software as they (and perhaps the market) see fit. Being human, they can't help but see the consumer as someone who should give selflessly of themselves to continue to support the producer. Take that last sentence, flip-flop "producer" and "consumer," and you have GNU's viewpoint.
It's the 21st century. We know that concentrating power entirely with the wealthy resource owners is just as bad as concentrating power entirely with the consumers. We've had over two centuries of wars and tens (if not hundreds) of millions of deaths over this. We should know by now that the best solution is a compromise. The only question that SHOULD remain is where the best compromise lies (something that nation-states are still debating).
At any rate, this whole "power vs. freedom" line in my opinion ranks right up there with "freedom to innovate." It's called "propoganda." Treat it as such.
it's a vicious cycle because if one is not making any economic gains as a lower-rung member of the socialist society, then one never becomes part of the gift culture. Thus, you have the same old aristocracy.
Socialism would work if people were inherently good. Sadly, we're self-absorbed bastards (me included).
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.
Funny thing is that the "free" software that Stallman so advocates is so inextricably intertwined with the IP laws he seems to hate. For example, the GPL could not exist without strict intellectual property laws. For example, with no IP you would have no power to insist all derivatives of your work must be bundled with source code. Without IP laws IBM, Microsoft, etc could use your source code with no credit or disclosure. The only thing that gives you the power to control how your source is used or disclosed is your ownership of that source. If your own source code was not legally considered property then the GPL could not exist.
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.
This just doesn't sit well with me at all. I don't demand that the people who create software I use release under the GPL over whatever license it is currently using. I *will* look for alternatives, with my priorities being cost and opensource, in that order. Remember, this is a 'free software' group speaking, not the 'open source' group; big difference. A manifest destiny declaring all software should be GPL'ed should be met with serious opposition.
My code, that I work on, is mine. I owe to no one the work that was involved. (Code produced for an employer is different. For now, I mean code I do on my spare time.) *If*, and this is a big If, if I distribute my code in any form to anyone, it is entirely at my descretion. I own my work, and I'll do with it what I please. I am very happy to abide by the GPL in gpl'ed code. The reason is it's *their* code I'm using. These are *their* conditions they want the code used for, and I will keep my end of the bargain in return for their generosity in providing for everyone. If I don't like it, I don't *have* to use their code.
No one, not even RMS, is going to tell John Carmack that Doom 3 *has* to be released under the GPL. However, if RMS wants to spout that His Immenence Carmack is taking advantage of power, he would cause more harm than good. John Carmack knows the value of the GPL, and has shown this many many times over, with the release of Wolf3d and Doom source code, followed by the GPL of the Doom and Quake source. This has done tremendous things for the home brew gaming community, and while he can't measure in dollars the good he has done, I hope he has even a close approximation of the help he has provided in the releasing GPL. I will follow to the letter every section of the GPL in any work I do based on John's released software; not out of fear for lawyers, but out of respect for John's contribution. His gift.
No one has the right to say what we can or cannot do with our 'art', code in this case. RMS can spout anything he likes, but the moment he decides that my release of SuperWhizBangTurbo MUST be GPL'd is the exact moment his freedom to swing ends at my nose.
RMS, we appreciate what you've done, and what you fail to realize is the sheer enormity of code released daily under the GPL. However, what your proposing is not 'increasing the freedoms of computer users everywhere', you are 'taking away the rights of programmers everywhere'. We do, have been, and will continue to release under the GPL at every opportunity. However, we will find something else in protest if any effort is made to force us to do so. Even if its for the greater good, we are stubborn individuals, and will resist any effort to force us into submission.
Toodles
Toodles D. Clown
The freedom to do what I want with my creations is just that -- a freedom.
If I want to write software that I then shred, that's my right. Stallman would force me to give it away.
Screw Stallman.
If it's something you need a compiler to use, it probably should be licensed under the LGPL. Otherwise, unless it's really unique, it's likely to become abandonware.
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
There are times when I may not want to give someone the right to redistribute my code, or modify it, or even to view it in its entirety. I may not like this myself, but in the real world it sometimes happens. (E.g., maybe my application requires a commercially produced third-party CD for its operation. Think of a game, or a data-intensive application. I don't have the right to redistribute that disc, nor can I confer it to others.)
Right now I can weigh the overall benefits and decide that partial disclosure is better than none. E.g., maybe I can publish a p-code interpreter even if I can't publish the p-code or its source.
But under an absolutist approach, I can't publish anything. The p-code is no real loss, since I couldn't distribute it anyway, but now nobody gets to see the interpreter either.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Read RMS' article. He defines the two terms, and while I'm not sure he's got his definitions right, they're the ones that are relevant for discussing his arguments.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
No.
This is a fundamentally wrong perception, and is at the root of nearly all the current problems in the software industry.
Everyone who uses a computer program works on it. Yes, even the ones who don't code.
Everyone who works on a computer program uses it. I hope this part is obvious.
Everybody who uses a program has something to contribute about it. Talk to a secretary about M$ Office sometime: you'll probably learn some things.
This was the real revolution at Xerox Parc: the idea that ordinary users should be consulted, not just coders.
This is why I'm involved in OSS: I think that we should eliminate the distinction entirely, and ordinary users should be given the power to code. It's also why I like Apple: they, more than anyone else, incorporate the insights of, well, normal people into their interfaces.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
What the authors are saying is that power is asserting your will on other people, that copyright law makes software authors enforce that power, and that that situation removes freedoms from users and other developers.
As you can guess, they're against it. So they recommend the GPL as a means of guaranteeing those freedoms. They do not say that the GPL is the only way of doing so, and they do not say that other licenses should be prohibited by legal or social means.
They only say that certain freedoms are important, that the GPL protects them, and that they do not advocate licenses that restrict those freedoms. Perhaps implicit in this is the idea that licenses proscribing usage guidelines are either pragmatically or legally unenforcable. So the "use" card is useless.
I'm beginning to think that several people intentionally read too much into this for a convenient excuse to complain. (This last comment is not directed at Twisted Logic, who correctly points out that choosing not to use a piece of software is a basic freedom.)
how to invest, a novice's guide
RMS even wants the GNOME project to not mention proprietary software as a matter of policy. If that isn't an attempt at censorship for political reasons I don't know what is.... It's actions such as these that "moderates" may find offensive.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I doubt any of those three companies would care if it did.
They've got patented technology in their consoles, you know, hardware. :)
M$ might have a problem with the XBox, though.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Fascinating. I was unaware of any society where people were granted total freedom to decide how the fruits of their labour are used.
For an example, I suggest the razor blade. Many people (mostly men) use this device to remove facial hair, and many other people (mostly women) use it to remove leg hair. Some other people use it to remove hair in ... other places.
Do you see the razor companies trying to tell you where to put your razor?
Huh.
And that's not even getting into the fact that the razors are actually being made by people (well, ok, by machines controlled by people); these people, somehow, do not seem to mind the idea that porn stars might use the fruits of their labour in an unusual way.
This is capitalism, folks. You just don't get to decide what other people do with the things you make, once you've sold those things to them.
It's the copyright control freaks who want to setup a non-capitalist state, IMO; if you look back in time, to a time when there were large organizations which held state-sponsored monopolies over certain industries, we called that system of economics feudalism.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
So, if we don't have the choice of how we release our software, if a "free" license is required (which as many have pointed out, can therefor not be "free") who is going to front the millions of dollars that get sunk into developing a modern commercial game? What about all of the money that goes into the research for scientific programs, etc.? The bottom line is the cost of duplication isn't the only cost involved. It costs very little to copy Titanic, but it cost something like $200 million to MAKE Titanic. The same goes for software, and to a lesser extent music.
At the start of his essay he states : "The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves." -- William Hazlitt
We're 6 billion people on the planet, if I cared about others more than I care about myself, I'll probably be dead by now. The only people I care about is me, my family and my friends. That's it.
So that people will know it's that Lessig.
The guy's famous. It's like saying Richard M. Stallman, of the Free Software Foundation.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Nice use of a Red Dwarf quote (I love the macho Rimmer ;-) but did you post that from, say, Win2K using IE? If so, WTF is up with the copyright symbols? Did MS finally change from CR/LF to something else? Is that Unicode for "Enter"? What is going on, Ye Gods Above?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
The demarcation is because we've erected an artificial barrier between programmers and non-programmers.
Programming isn't hard. Nearly any reasonably bright person can learn some simple programming skills. Sure, the Elite Coder will still be a rare thing, but I don't think the current setup where we have a wall between coders and non-coders is a good idea.
And, to some extent, user interface developments have been in agreement with me. The typical desktop is now much more customizable by the end-user than its equivalent of the mid-80s. Why did disk-loading operating systems take over? ROMs boot much, much faster; disk-loading systems are more customizable.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
In other words, he can make any changes he wants, and your software automatically assumes that license. I.E. He starts working for 'PC Corp' and he changes the license so that 'PC Corp' may legally use the source for any GPL'd project without releaseing the modifications.
That's just one example... There are more just like it.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Your simple post is attractive for its conciseness, but you conflate the power to take away freedoms and the power to protect freedom. They are different.
The distinction is actually rather obvious. You have the freedom to do anything you like except take away freedoms. You are being too simplistic with your notion of "power"- It's not that all power is bad, but rather that power when used to take away important freedoms is bad.
The GPL takes away no more freedom than is necessary to preserve freedom, and in a world where no one is able to take away your freedom to use information (i.e., a world without copyright), the GPL becomes unenforcable, you're right- but also unnecessary. I can only guess that those shouting loudest about how the GPL takes away freedoms must be paid by microsoft, because the only freedom it takes away is your right to keep someone else from having the same freedoms you have, and the only beneficiaries of such a system would be those who want to take the work of the community and make it exclusively their own.
Your "right to defend my home" example presumes you have an exclusive right to the object you are protecting. Intellectual property doesn't work this way though- the government grants you a temporary monopoly, it is not yours by right but rather because the framers of the constitution thought it would be a good bargain that would maximize social benefit. Unfortunately, they were wrong.
Your "censorship" example raises a good point. Everyone has the right to say that certain things ought not be said, but no one has the right to *keep people from saying those things*. Where is the freedom to censor? It is incompatible with free speech, and free speech is a fundamental right, so it trumps the "freedom to censor". Similarly, the freedom to take away other people's right to use software is incompatible with the freedom to use and modify software for any purpose.
No wishing for more wishes. -the djinni
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
From this essay we can see that RMS holds a more fundemental view that everyone is skirting around but not really attacking directly. It is a particular view on what Freedom is, this is implicit in his being so it's hardly worth moaning on about sneaky redefinition on his part, actually no he wants to be our bearded master etc. etc. He is stating that the FSF reject the notion that software authors should be allowed to choose their own license for software. He makes no apologies that the FSF is a radical group, and the GPL is the most vocal expression, under current copyright law, of their ideals, and a bridge for authors to place their software into that world of quite specific ideals. But the ideals that the GPL represents are not best served by copyright law, and this essay reaches beyond copyright to an even more overtly political stance: that computer software is too important to be protected by copyright, which makes it "too" easy for authors to restrict what people do with their code. This is based on Lessig's maxim that "code is law"; as I understand it, he means that computer software regulates the pace and rules of modern living to such a degree that it thoroughly regulates our lives in many of the same ways that the government and police force would. Lessig concludes his book with a suggestion that the Y2K fears might have been allayed if software was treated as fundamentally as law, and at least deposited with a government agency in case of crisis; I think this is the direction that Stallman is leaning in. That is to say the very act of creating a piece of software that anybody, anywhere might use carries a public responsibility for its effects, and part of this responsibility must involve people who use it not being helpless to change it if the circumstances require: whether this be fixing a bug or removing an unneeded piece of functionality.
I've certainly formed some new conclusions as a result of this essay; but in general I agree that he's making his position more extreme by explicitly rejecting the current structure of (C) law with regard to software.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
Power and freedom are very hardy words that stand in much abuse yet stand again for the next debate. You can argue all you want about Freedom and Power and yet find you are arguing about nothing at all. If you can have wars against drugs and wars against terrorism, you can have the Freedom to have Power and the Power of Freedom. You can argue endless rhetoric on how the Power to not give other people the Freedom to have Power over other people's Freedom and then find the next reply to that is another twist on words that seems equally correct.
So to avoid this in a talk about software licenses, I ask you to believe only in real things. The words Power and Freedom don't decide arguments. We're talking about the words "software" and "can do" which are real. What can you do with your software and why can or can't you? And are the reasons just?
Yes...I suppose "just" is another trap in unreality. But its an opinion that I can't say how you answer. I guess Stallman has been asking you to ask yourself a question for a long time now. Is it okay to be fined for pirating software. Or should I say sharing software. Uh! the English language is such a mess. Don't trust your language to win arguments. You must depend on the reasoning of the reader to know what it is you are really talking about and not simply respond to rhetoric on vague words. The readers who do this are most probably not the same people who win arguments or who become President.
George Orwell warned us about this as well. He said "Political language [...] is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." This is about political language but it applies equally here.
My opinion is this. I think RMS has a problem with tripping over the rhetoric. The token "Free Software" is definitely an abuse of the word. But I am certain there is something real here. You all can imagine how bad it can be where software is owned. What power can an owner not have when he can write in the beginning of the software "You will be fined if you don't follow my rules". And this is software we can't do without.
But however you believe, believe only in real things. Honesty is greater than wit.
I've long considered that his notion of what "free" means is a little beyond the mainstream, but this clearly spells out that what he has in mind is something insidious. He's clearly trying to redefine what freedom means in an attempt to promote a radical, downright socialist agenda.
The claim that individual software authors don't have the freedom to choose what software license they release under is absurd. Trying to claim that to excercise the right to decide how one's labor is exploited as "power" is absurd. That's called freedom. Users don't have the right to decide how the fruits of a programmers labor are to be used. They do have the right to choose not to use the software in question.
I've long questioned the idea that the GPL promotes some kind of freedom. It clearly is an attempt to plant some kind of social virus which compels the actions of others. But as radical as that is, RMS clearly wishes he could go further and restrict the rights of others to sell the fruits of their labors in a fair and equal market system. I question whether those really interested in creating meaningful software really which to put that yoke on their shoulders and tow the plow of Stallman's vision.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
This is probably posted too late to get much notice, but I think the point made by Stallman is not quite right. Choosing a license may be exercising power, but by advocating that no one choose any license but his own, he is putting you under his power (the optional "any later version" clause in the GPL that is the source of such conflict).
I think it sounds a bit ridiculous for him to say "I believe in the freedom to do anything you want with your software, except choose any license but my own".
Depending on how you define power, every design decision you make - from language to compilers to licenses - is exercising some form of power. You can explicitly exclude some users (using nonstandard GNU compiler extensions) or write code that can be used anywhere.
Stallman is NOT the god he believes himself to be. He seems to be more like a homeless man that knows how to code. Far too many people listen to his rantings.
We reject this because it is really a form of power, not a freedom.
Philosphy exercise: define the difference between "freedom" and "the power of self-determination."
Stallman et al are playing linguistic hockey here, drawing distinctions that don't exist. They'd have you have you give up this freedom because it's a power and therefore bad, but you can't annihilate power - you'd only be giving it up to them.
So, no thanks, I'll retain the power over my code. And retain the freedom to decide what happens to it. It's the same thing.
If RMS and company want to exercise their freedom of speech (in America, anyway) and not support something, why is anyone complaining?
In a way, RMS is the grandfather of Open Source and Linux and all the stuff that the /. crowd uses everyday, and I think they get pissed at how hard line he is, and how political he is. They wish he would help the community more directly rather than ranting and raving about insignificant things all the time.
I think he's doing just fine.. I'm smart enough to read what he writes and pick out what's important and what makes sense, and what's just politics or minutia.
RMS isn't god, or president, he's just presenting his opinion.
...is because they force my hand too much, too often. I feel disempowered when I use MS products. I never thought I'd say this, but the GPL is starting to feel that way too. But I like the concept of the license itself -- that if someone takes my code, I can require them to publish their changes. I just don't like these people foisting the GPL on "code owners" (yes, I believe in ownership). I don't mean this as a troll, but as a real question in light of the circumstances: are there licenses similar to the GPL that are not in any way associated with these people?
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"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."
Following this train of logic, the GPL should be studiously avoided, as it attempts to use the power of copyright law to dictate what other people can and cannot do with the code.
In short, RMS is openly advocating the use of BSD, Artistic and Public Domain licensing... as they don't try to strongarm the users into only using the code in a certain way.
Gun. Foot. Trigger. Pull.
SoupIsGood Food
What's this software freedom about?
I've found it very difficult to explain it to those who don't care about it. It's just like trying to explain the importance of western freedom to a stalinist, a chinese, or a religious fanatic. They simply say, "What do I need that freedom for?" Why would a monogamist need freedom for free sex or a muslism for free beer?
I guess the main problem is that we who appreciate this freedom live in such a different world. We appreciate it because we have experienced it and we don't want to give it away, ever again.
10 years ago, I had a computer. All of my software was pirated, because I nor my family wasn't exactly filthy rich, so I never could have afforded to buy all the software I needed. I loved programming, but the costs of even cheapest development tools would have been prohibitive.
But even with enough money, there would still have been inpenetrable barriers of the proprietary software which I could never change or use in any way, except the restricted ways the producers allow me. I was living, from morning to the evening, in a totaliarian world with high walls everywhere.
5 years ago, I became a Linux user. All the barriers crumbled down, and I could at last breathe freely and freely look at everything in the world in which I live. My world had changed.
Well, my world has its problems. If I want to buy a computer, Linux may or may not have drivers for its hardware. Not all web pages work any more, because Internet Explorer has become a standard. "The other world" is a threat to my dream world, to my freedom. Then someone thinks I'm a fanatic just because I want to protect my free world from Microsoft, which is a totalitarian regime par taleban or the chinese gov. To them, my free world is The Enemy, because if I live in my world, I don't make them profit, and *gasp* might even seduce other paying customers to my world. They want to take my freedom away.
But this is me, a programmer, who really *needs* the freedom. Why would anybody else care about this free world?
Free software isn't just Liber Software, but also gratis beer software. It changes the entire idea that you have to pay for the air you breathe. It decriminalizes all the kids who have a computer and want to explore the world of computing (like playing games).
But no, I don't believe I could ever explain the splendidness of my world of Free Software or other freedoms to a taleban or a chinese communist or a religious fundamentalist or any other authoritarian person. Such as a Microsoft shareholder.
Even with my background, it took me a long time to understand the freedom RMS is talking about. He is talking about software freedom, where you can change and distribute any software without being jailed as a thief, not your freedom to take the freedom of others away with (proprietary) licenses.
Of course RMS is a libertarian in other many senses too. It might be that he sometimes unnecessarily mixes different concepts of liberties, I don't know. But he's perhaps the most influential person for creating the world I live in today, so I'll gladly give him my respect for that.
Not a new idea, of course -- I'm sure I've seen it on
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I think Kuhn and RMS have a very convoluted view of the nature of individual power.
First of all, picking a copyright licence, GPL or not is precisly "to make decisions that affect others more than you". Under the GPL, the author grants some, but not all of the "exclusive rights" given to him by the Copyright Act. If Kuhn and RMS believe that retaining exclusive rights is an "exercise of power" per their definition of this term, then they should advocate placing software into the public domain. Instead they retain some of the power to exclude and use it to achieve their particular agenda. That agenda is not a bad one, but the idea that it is the only one that is acceptable is ludicrous.
In no sense is the exclusion of others from using your software for their own proprietary interests "being able to make decisions that affect mainly you". Who are they talking to when they say "you"? They drift back and forth between the interests of the users, authors, and other developers so it's hard to tell. Their definition of power focuses on "you" being the decision maker, ie the author, so deciding conditions for the exercise of your exclusive rights your code definitely "affects mainly others", since it will be the basis for the exercise of governmental force against them if they violate it.
The essay really moves to the far far left fringe. I think MS was wrong when they called the GPL "un-American", but with essays like this, they aren't far of the mark. The idea that exercising a "right to exclude" is a "power" (presumed bad) and not a "freedom", is simply contrary to mainstream American values. Isn't property by definition an exclusive right? In fact, all rights involve defining a space of action and giving exclusive moral sanction in that space to somebody and denying it to either the government or others or both.
Current copyright law places us in the position of power over users of our code, whether we like it or not. The ethical response to this situation is to proclaim freedom for each user, just as the Bill of Rights was supposed to exercise government power by guaranteeing each citizen's freedoms.
The first sentence is profoundly wrong. If you don't want to be in a "position of power", simply proclaim the software public domain. Of course, the GPL doesn't do this, which compounds the error with hypocracy.
Next follows the most troubling part of the whole essay: that last quoted sentence is a whopper. The implication that it is unethical to exercise your rights if those involve excluding others is the essence of the communist belief system. The Bill of Rights restricts government from violating individual rights, and most prominent among these is the right to property, which includes proprietary interests in intellectual property as a subset of statutory and contractual assets generally.
In summary, the essay is a convoluted parade of offsetting errors: the GPL violates the very principle the authors imply is "unethical" (retaining exclusive rights = "power") , but the idea that it is unethical to exclude others from your property is a far worse concept.
OSS is more of a political party than a way of doing things as it once was. God forbid we don't write GNU on everything that is opensourced ... maybe we don't want it to be GNU ... and even if my code is GPL'd, opensource, or buried in a bunker it will always remain my code and my code alone.
Eric Raymond this, Stallman that, Torvalds there ... Great men in the world of open source, but what some people fail to realize is even without them open source will live on forever. It's not a power to choose ... it's a choice to choose.
I'll tell you why I personallu endorse open source ... I want the ability to maybe help someone out with my code in the future to be able to help them with their personal code, because I would have never learned the languages I know now had it not been for the viewing of working source code.
I don't need to feel better about my Linux OS by knowing the code is there ... personally I've never looked at the kernel source code and I have no real intention to do so in the future, if I could upgrade a kernel via binary I probably would ... there's no benefit to me for it being open source.
HOWEVER with the source there I can look at it to get a feel for how an operating system functions at the basic level of source code, and because I don't want to go poke around at the code doesn't mean that thousands of others around the world don't every single day.
I'm not anti-open-source, I'm just pissed that Stallman seems to think it doesn't exist without him ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
How can giving people the ability to tell others what information they can and cannot communicate, and what programs they can and cannot run, possibly be an individual freedom? Even (sane) proponents of copyright law will admit that it, not the absence of it, is clearly a deviation from individual freedom - one enacted for utilitarian reasons of promoting creativity (read the American constitution for example).
Being given the legal mandate to tell people what they cannot do with information, just because you happen to have written it, can never be construed as a freedom and can thus only be justified in the context of social benefit, as the poster you responded to wrote. It is little different from my and my peers practice of forming a government that taxes you - taxing you is not "our individual freedom" it is a power we grant ourselves and justify in a social context.
Ask yourself who has been more threatening to your individual freedom of late. RMS and others who advocate free communication, or the MPAA & RIAA and their laws like the DMCA and SSSCA? (Which are both justified and _necessary_ laws if we are to put the protection of copyright above it's social cost.)
I have no problem with "secret recipies" and I have several programs which I have not released in order to protect the company I am joint owner of. BUT: if a program is released I don't see why anyone should have any right to prevent, or control how, other people using it.
Why should you? And if you should why can't you publish a list of ways to get from London to York and then charge everyone that goes by those routes?
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Why does it have to be copyright?
See my argument here.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
It's true, I'm not being a troll. He thinks that the man should naturally have decision-making power in a marriage relationship because the man is stronger. Not surprising that he'd be in favor of microsoft making your decisions for you too.
Also, Locke ultimately says all these rights belong to a Christian god (which is why he thinks it's wrong to commit suicide- you don't own that body meester).
uwmurray, I think it is you who ought to review Locke. Or at least read some Rousseau or Hobbes or something, for Christ's sake.
Finally, intellectual property is not a natural right, it is a utility-maximizing bargain engineered by the framers of the constitution designed to increase social welfare by granting temporary monopolies to artists. It just doesn't work.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
You can not contract away your fundamental freedoms. You can not sign a binding contract to become a slave, or to sell your own children. It is illegal to rope someone into an overly coercive contract.
RMS's point is that the right to use and modify software is a fundamental right that affects almost all of our interactions with the world as computers become increasingly ubiquitous. Hence, contracting away this fundamental freedom is much like signing a contract that makes you a slave- it should be illegal because it's *too* coercive and *too* restrictive of fundamental freedoms.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
christians killing abortion doctors and blowing up clinics, or GWBush claiming to be able to win a war on terrorism, or the US government dealing with the draconian Chinease government. The world is filled with hypocrites.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
If I give you some software, and just say 'here, thanks for the 10 bucks, here's the software' then copyright law applies. I have sold you the work, similar to if you purchased a CD at the record store.
If, on the other hand, I permit you to use the work under a license agreement that we both agree to, then your statements don't hold up. IF that license agreement clearly states that you cannot make archival copies, then you cannot make archival copies. I don't mean click-wrap agreements here, I mean your lawyer and my lawyer going over them, signatures, witnesses, etc... like a REAL contract.
IN this case, I have NOT 'sold' you a work protected by copyright. I have licensed you the use of my intellectual property under certain, specific terms.
Given the amount of money the BSA thinks is being lost to software piracy, they would have implemented such measures already if it were practical.
Side note: Wisely, the BSA runs its web site using free software.
I am absolutely INCENSED that you are trying to dictate to ME what comparison I should make between Stallman and Bill Gates. When I post to slashdot, _I_ should have control as to how I portray those two people. How DARE you try to control my thoughts by expressing your own opinion!
Your statements about transfer of license and archival backups is not strictly true.
Yes, under straight copyright law, they are true.
However..... there is such thing as a 'contract'. Now.. I'm not talking about stupid 'click-wrap' agreements.. I'm talking about real contracts, usually the result of some negotiation.
In Germany, for example, you can transfer things like Microsoft Operating Systems to other people. Even the EULA cannot take away this right. I am aware of ZERO cases in which the right to make archival backups of the software is not allowed.
I think it would be a HUGE step forward if contracts were not allowed to supercede rights awarded through copyright. Think about it - an author of a book does not prevent you from making archival copies, or from transferring your copyright (and all archivals) - or even charging a fee for it.
The software producers are principally interested in controlling as much of their market as possible - in order to maximize profits. No one would ever license a book that had to be relicensed every year in order to keep it working - yet many people are happy to do that to use Microsoft's software (not just them - DEC (now Compaq) is horrible this way).
This is just a broken market. It needs fixing from someone with some perspective and whose wallet has not been recently fattened by Microsoft or Disney - the corporations working hard to weaken US copyright law.
I think a lot of confusion and hot air has risen because of mixed meanings of the word "free" or "freedom" once again. It is perfectly valid to say that "Free Softward" does not include the freedom to make the software not free in the sense of removing the freedoms of users and developers. This makes perfect sense.
The freedom vs. power thing is much more confusing and muddling. Even the GPL is a choosing by the developers and implicit within it is the right to choose. The choice made may be more or less moral, amoral or immoral but there is still choice.
Saying choice itself is wrong has nothing to do with freedom in its fullest sense.
How about allowing developers to choose whatever license they want for the software they develop? Sure, every copyrighted work is supposed to enter the public domain after a temporary time. That doesn't mean that the source code enters the public domain--only the released binaries. Think about it. Let's say a band makes some music. When that music recording enters the public domain, the band isn't required to release the sheet music. How the music was achieved has nothing to do with the fact that it enters the public domain. The same rule holds true for software, in my opinion. Most people have simply forgotten that the source code has nothing to do with the released work which is supposed to enter the public domain. Put another way, let's say someone came up with an ingenius way to play music that nobody has thought of before, and that person makes a bunch of recordings and sells an album. Some years later, that album enters the public domain, which means that people can use the music for whatever they want. The musician doesn't have to tell the world how the recording was achieved (the source code to the recording). So I'm saying Stallman's being a dumbass. If I want to release software under a license that says you are not allowed to run the software at all, then I'll release software that way. When it enters the public domain, people can use it. But that has nothing to do with the source code. You can still modify a binary. You can still learn the algorithms. True, it's more difficult. But if the program was difficult to write, it should be difficult to decypher. Oh well.
With regards to these EULA's, yes... but what about a corporate contract, involving real lawyers, notaries, witnesses, etc?
You can bet your booties the situation would be different then.
"right" is a wholly subjective term. You want to argue that I'm just saying my opinions are truth, then I can say the same thing.
:)
Every company I've worked for considered a program to be a PRODUCT. That's why programmers create products, not because of some inherent philosophical alignment with production vs. thought, it's because the world deems what they create to be product, and not art. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is whatever gets you paid so that you can survive outside of your corporate master's domain. All this talk about 'art' means nothing when you're talking about the survival of a company, that 100s/1000s/10,000s/etc. people draw their livelihood from, or that your rent is paid, or making sure your kids eat, or your elderly mother has her medicine, or whatever your responsibilities are.
I'm a self-taught programmer. I didn't have the benefit of the good parts of CS training (like theory and modeling and such), or the curse of the bad parts of it like all this holier-than-thou shit about code being 'art' and the study of classical logic and calculus being the only way to get things done. You can learn the theory on your own, but it takes a long time to unlearn the rhetoric. One of these days all the shit will flush from your brain and you'll realize I'm right
That's a little more pessimistic a stance than I'd take. It's true that partly through Amendments (the 14th, 16th, and 17th come to mind) and partly through Supreme Courts' just looking the other way, the United States has gotten away from the form of Constitutional government ratified in Philadelphia in 1787.
At the same time, it's gotten better in a few ways since then. For one thing, now we let all genders and races vote. For another, in the eighteenth century this was an experiment - a radical outlandish idea. Now we can say it has lasted 200 years, produced the most powerful nation in the world, and, in modified forms, spread around the globe. Soviet communism took less than 75 years to die.
So there's hope for the Republic. "Living documents" and "political third rails" are scary, but yeah, there's hope.
grep -ri 'should work'