Freedom or Power Redux

Warhammer writes: "In his web log today Tim O'Reilly responded to Stallman and Kuhn's essay, Freedom or Power (previous Slashdot article). I think he has some great points about not getting caught up in who has more of a right to freedom. Instead he says we should concentrate on a compromise that benefits everyone, developer and user alike."

Ed. note - a brief response to Tim. A) my name isn't Timothy. (I know, I know, we all look alike. :) And B) I was trying to say pretty much what O'Reilly is saying - that all licensing, including the GPL, is an expression of power over what other people can do with the software. Hence the term "all licensing". If there were no copyright whatsoever on computer code, no intellectual property considerations at all, perhaps we could approach the state of true freedom. In the meantime, the GPL is a good way to place code firmly into a state where it is mostly free - you are free to do anything with GPL code except take it out of its free state. As far as restrictions go, this one is infinitely more palatable than most of the powers that software licensing seeks to exercise over software users.

As a more general point, I take issue with O'Reilly's description of copyright law as a compromise between creators and users. There's absolutely no evidence that the rights of users are considered when copyright laws are made. All copyright law changes made in my lifetime, nearly all copyright law changes ever, have been expansions of copyright law - if it's a compromise, it's an extraordinarily one-sided one. (I suppose you could a describe a mugging as a compromise between the mugger and the little old lady over rights to her purse.) Copyright law is more accurately described as a compromise between copyright holders and copyright holders. Other descriptions are both inaccurate and do a disservice to efforts to reform the laws.

Comments

Why is this either/or?

[ahfoo]

Since this is being brought up again, I'll just repost what I posted last time because it was good then and it's good now:

Arguments based on fundamentally weak propositions never succeed in communicating very clearly and that appears to be the case here. It's the rhetorical parallel of "garbage in, garbage out."
People do this all the time, but that doesn't make it a sound logical practice.
I think the initial quote on the piece by Hazlitt is very suggestive of the overall tone . . .
"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves."
I take issue with this quote. The suggestion being that there has to be either the love of oneself of the love of others. There is no real argument being made here, simply an opinion being stated. As a person very full of love for myself and for others, I think it's a ridiculous statement. I say you have to love yourself to love others

Re:weblog???

[J'raxis]

502? I get a 302 (Found), but it doesnt actuall perform the redirect. Not to mention it is redirecting to itself...