Slashdot Mirror
Freedom or Power Redux
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.
Please, post comments. Don't use your position as the guy writing the story to give your comments an automatic permanent "+5, sysop".
Copyright is a brilliant compromise. It encourages people to make things available that they wouldn't otherwise, knowing that they still have some control over these things. Now, I grant freely that the huge extension of copyright duration works solidly against users - but other aspects of the law have done a very good job of balancing these things, such as the fair use rules.
In the absence of copyright, how exactly do you think games would get written? How would John Carmack earn a living?
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Carl G. Jung
--
"With one breath, with one flow, You will know Synchronicity" -La Policia
You also aren't allowed to distribute GPL'd code without an attached political screed you may not agree with, nor are you allowed to release free software which links with GPL'd code, but doesn't contain any. Consider RIPEM; a program was released, which was self-contained, and had a sed script to change it to link with the GNU fast MP math library. They got harassed because it was *POSSIBLE* to make their code *WORK WITH* GPL'd code, but it wasn't free enough.
:)
That's a far cry from "the only thing you can't do is take away the freedom". It is a lie, and a willful one, to claim that you can take away the freedom of *ANY* free code. If I put code in the public domain, no one can ever make it unfree. They can make their own versions with whatever restrictions they want, but *MY* code remains free, forever. No other license can say as much.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
this is one issue that I have never understood about open source advocacy: the talk about "users".
(pure) users can't program thus their "freedom" is a 1:1 coupling to the freedom of the programmer that is their "supplier".
The only freedoms that thus matter are those of programmers (and "users that can program", if you must). But an easier metric to compare licenses would be "Nth level recipient", i.e.:
zero level: the original programmer and licensor
1st level: the programmer that builds on the original code
2nd level and onward: programmer that wants to build on the N-1 level base.
The GPL gives "most freedom" to levels 0 and 2 onwards (the more "selfish" license), whereas the BSD license gives "most freedom" to level 1 (a license giving "most freedom" to all of them can't exist, it will always be a fundamental choice). As soon as a level is occupied by a "user", there won't be any N+1 levels after it, so "freedom" becomes irrelevant.
They might at least consider arguing something a little farther back on each of their logic chains then, since bickering over licensing is silly. They are both sides starting from completely different assumptions and have done nothing to reconcile those assumptions before racing off to debate the merits of their conclusions.
Here is a symbolized version of this debate and why it is pointless. Tim says: x=1, y=2, therefore x+y = 3. FSF says: x=5, y=5, therefore x+y = 10. Instead of discussing the original assumptions about the values of x and y, this debate is over the value of x+y where each side has chosen its own values for x and y.
Tim says in this log: "My goal is to see as much good software created as possible."
RMS/FSF says: "You deserve to be able to cooperate openly and freely with other people who use software. You deserve to be able to learn how the software works, and to teach your students with it. You deserve to be able to hire your favorite programmer to fix it when it breaks." Note: they do not say "Software deserves to be good no matter what."
These assumptions may spring a priori from the moral and aesthetic convictions held by each side in this debate, but until they agree on assumptions, arguing the consequents is fruitless.
I do not have a signature
Stallman doesn't give a shit about the software industry -- he lives and works in the academic universe.
Since his job & livlihood is funded by gov't grants, charity and tuition, he does not have to worry about actually producing profit.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
From the parent of the parent of this:
The goal of the FSF is very much to increase individual rights, by calling into question the validity of a system that allows a few individuals to limit the rights of many individuals.
And from the above poster:
You are using the same rhetoric that communists have used against capitalism since communism was born.
Surely the staunch republicans of the USA would say that a reduction in government and a promotion of individualism is exactly the same goal as the FSF in this respect, namely the promotion of the individual over that of some limited set that govern.
This communist-capitalist debate strikes me as being rather meaningless because each camp claims the other is some extreme - the Rand followers would say 'the FSF is communism, we should be allowed to do whatever we want as individuals', and the FSF followers would reply 'the FSF is republicanism because we are promoting the needs of everyone against some governing body [meaning large monopolistic software corporations that reduce freedom]'.
The truth is, Richard Stallman doesn't want to be hindered by not being able to fix his programs when they go wrong, and he hates it. He hates it so much that he doesn't want anyone else to have this problem. This is not the same goal as no license, which is the maximum freedom possible. Stallman doesn't want true freedom, because true freedom could take away from his goal of ALWAYS being able to get inside and sort a program out if he wanted to do something that wasn't anticipated by the developers. True freedom on the part of the software company permits one to reduce people's freedom with regard to WHAT THEY HAVE DONE. This may be morally wrong to some people, because they don't have freedom with the creations of others. This is what Stallman wants.
Bit of a ramble.
thenerd.
thenerd.
The camels are coming. I'm in love.
But the GPL is just as much an expression of power over users as any proprietary license.
Hello, RMS.
I like the project I'm working on. I want to share the source code, because I think a lot of other people might apply it in groovy ways that don't suggest themselves to me.
But YOUR viewpoint is brick for brick the same prison as the Redmond Institute for the Monopolistically Inclined.
Mr. O'Reilly, your moderate view is a breath of fresh air.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
O'Reilly says
But that's not the same goal as RMS. RMS has repeatedly stated that he'd accept an inferior piece of software, if the superior product was non-free. RMS expects the right to copy the software, read the software, learn how it works, and make modifications to it. RMS wants the software to be unencumbered at to how you use it, where you use it, why you use it, who uses it, when you use it, EXCEPT for the tiny encumberment that you don't deny anybody else the same freedoms.
Until O'Reilly argues on the same wavelength as RMS - which means either attacking the stated goals of RMS, or attacking the means RMS uses to achieve those goals - then O'Reilly won't have an essay worth reading. When you watch a debate you expect PRO and CON for the SAME argument, not PRO and PRO for DIFFERENT arguments.
Actually, you're wrong. The basis of property is scarcity. Libertarianism requires that governments not intervene in the marketplace, so that free actors may engage in legitimate contracts with each other.
"Intellectual property" is a government granted monopoly. It's not compatible with the libertarian edict that that government which governs least, governs best. Property is defined by scarcity. Information itself is not scarce, it is the ability to create information that is scarce. Hence, in a truly free market, information would cost nearly nothing but the scarce commodity, the ability to create useful software, would be highly prized and sought after, and coders would refuse to deliver the goods unless they were paid in advance. But this is not a free market, and corporations (immortal, non-human, property-holding entities) can own information and keep humans from using it to make society better, or profit, or whatever.
Socialists would want to allow for communal ownership of everything. That means you can't sell information. That's not what the GPL says- it just says you can't sell it exclusively, just like you can't sell sunlight exclusively. The GPL is most definitely a libertarian document. The GPL attempts to correct the Government interference into the marketplace represented by copyright and patent law by accepting copyright and refusing the freedom-reducing priveleges that go along with a government granted monopoly.
In a free market, all this would be unnecessary.
For extra credit, what inefficiencies are introduced into a market when the free flow of information is hindered?
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...