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GNU GPL law and "lagom" copyright
Johannes writes "Newsforge column on "lagom" copyright. I think we need to discuss these issues more. Maybe a GNU GPL law isn't so bad after all. As Pawlo states: "Would not a modern democratic society benefit from a plurality of irreconcilable and incompatible doctrines? We need the GNU GPL, but we also need proprietary software, Open Source software, BSD licenses, the Apache license and so forth. That would make the case for GNU GPL legislation void. However, as Lawrence Lessig taught us in his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, the code may in itself work against plurality.""
Smegma.
The same law governing software is no different than that governing books. Everyone is in agreement that the restrictions on books are acceptable terms, so the question should be,
"Why are software licenses more restrictive than books?"
If it was just a matter of lawyers saying 'Hey, we can put some more restrictions in place' them why did it not propogate back to books? Is it there because it's easier to get people to agree to? Perhaps software licenses are a matter of enforcibility.
My point? People are not asking the right questions. As the right questions and the answers are right around the corner.
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Lagom
m
Havamål is full of advises such as "be hospitable, but not too hospitable" (35), "be wise, but not too wise" (54-56), "be careful, but not too careful" (131), "enjoy beer, but don't drink too much" (11-19), enjoy food, but not too much" (20-21), "be careful not to boast over your sharp intellect" (6-7). These wisdoms of life is still a characteristic value in the Swedish mind, indeed, it is one of the most distinguished and revered virtues in the Swedish society. The word itself is untranslatable. It refers to an undefined state between extremes, "not too much, not too little". The dictionary suggest "just right, just enough, sufficiently, adequate, fitting, appropriate, moderate", which hardly captures the inner subjective logic of this genuinely Swedish value. The lagom value can be inferred from equality and the Jante Law and also with the Swedes envy and self-criticism as being different expressions of the same underlying paradoxical values of mutual appreciation/social control and individualism (loneliness)/collective support. The evenness of mind that the lagom is expressing may have been fostered in the evenness in the climate: it is not too hot in the summer, and not too cold in the winter. But several other factors must have contributed.
The lagom, even, mentality among the Swedes can be frustrating for many foreigners, as it is seen as either boring, conflict avoiding, emotionally cool, formal, uncommunicative, socially confined, or spiritually empty. Certainly these aspects can be true, but it can also bee seen as not boring, but expectant; not conflict avoiding, but diplomatic; not emotionally cool, but deep feelings directed inward; not formal, but polite; not uncommunicative, but reflective; not socially confined, but thoughtful; not spiritually empty, but willing to listen to others. The lagom mentality can also be seen as that trait which gives the Swedish society its characteristic stability, and yet openness to influences from outside. In Hofstede's study, Sweden scored low on the "uncertainty avoidance index", which can be exemplified by factors such as "the uncertainty inherent in life is more easily accepted and each day is taken as it comes; the ambiance is one of less nationalism; less showing of emotions is preferred; deviation is not considered threatening - great tolerance is shown"(26). As a matter of fact, the entire Edda mythology can be seen in a ambivalent manner - it is unclear who is in command among the gods (even though Oden probably was considered the highest); there are no absolutely "good guys" (with a possible exception of Balder, the god of beauty, wisdom, and gentleness) or "bad guys"; the gods themselves have flaws and suffer from many of our simple human faults; even the evil giants can be agreeable sometimes; and the seed of destruction (Ragnarök) was actually found among the gods themselves (the intriguing of the god Loke leading to the death of Balder). We can thus see the ability to cope with, even the encouragement of, the uncertainty of life reflected in the Edda, indicating that this trait has a long tradition.
But the lagom has, as indicated earlier, also a repressive effect: you're not supposed to be too good, or too rich. Thus, Sweden does not have an extreme income distribution, just a lagom spectra between the poorest and the richest. The lowest paid in Sweden earns fully 60% more than those with the lowest income in the USA. On the other hand, the 10 % best paid earns only twice as much as those with the lowest income. In the USA the relation is 6:1. The taxes are one of the highest in the world, which makes foreign observers puzzled why the Swede still work so hard?(27) I would suggest that it is a reflection of the equality-Jante Law-lagom triad of values reigning in Sweden: work hard (the Lutheran inheritance to the Vikings), but don't stand out. But all rules have an exception and so also in the case of wealth: Swedes do not revere those who make a fortune from hard work, but the heroes are found in those who win a fortune on lotto, bingo, pools win etc. The national consciousness is in this respect more fatalistic and faith encouraging than what actually Swedes officially claim: belief in the necessity of work, denying of the supernatural and immaterial. This is one of the most official pictures of the Swede, and it is said to origin from the struggle against the forces of nature in the agricultural Sweden, where one had to work hard to survive the long winter. This gave rise to lack of communicative abilities and the little interest for the immaterial side of the existence(28).
from
"The Human Values of Swedish Management"
http://www.fek.su.se/Home/gus/PAPERS\Swedval.ht
moderate (mdr-t) adj.
1. Being within reasonable limits; not excessive or extreme: a moderate price.
2. To restrain from excess of any kind; to reduce from a state of violence, intensity, or excess; to keep within bounds; to make temperate; to lessen; to allay; to repress; to temper; to qualify; as, to moderate rage, action, desires, etc.; to moderate heat or wind.
3. Kept within due bounds; observing reasonable limits; not excessive, extreme, violent, or rigorous; limited; restrained; as: (a) Limited in quantity; sparing; temperate; frugal; as, moderate in eating or drinking; a moderate table. (b) Limited in degree of activity, energy, or excitement; reasonable; calm; slow; as, moderate language; moderate endeavors. (c) Not extreme in opinion, in partisanship, and the like; as, a moderate Calvinist.
4. To become less violent, severe, rigorous, or intense; as, the wind has moderated.
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Linux does have support for Token Ring. I've used it for several years w/o a problem. Even with old (scary old) IBM model 30's and worse. :) But I guess it depends on how slow the HDs you have are.
As for the FS, it don't quite work the same as DOS. You really don't need to defrag them, it won't really gain you all that much. You can fsck them as much as you want though
GPL is the Gnu Public License. Alot of people share your view about it though. I'm not saying I'm for it or against it (below). Just commenting on it
I don't think this is true. You can use the tool w/o releasing the source for what you are doing. So long as that source is not derived from a GPL project. All the libraries that you'd need for system calls are LGPL'd for this reason. There are quite a few companies that sell products that are not GPL but are created using GPL or LGPL tools (trolltech to name one) You definently can't just change a part of the kernel and remove the GPL license, which is pretty reasonable, IMHO, for the same argument you made for not wanting to open your source. (Should the community do all that work for free just to give a company a competative edge?) But I don't know how the GPL works for kernel modules. It might be possible to write a loadable kernel module that is not GPL. I think some of the accelerated XFree86 video drivers that are released as binary only are loadable kernel modules
I'm just wondering what you were doing that required a kernel modification on linux (where kernel source is available) that was easier to do on windows 2000 (where kernel source is not available)? If you're rewritting it from scratch anyways was there something inherent you found about windows (other than the liscense interpretations) that made this easier to do on the windows platform? In my expirence, the lower level you go on Win32 the thinner the documentation can get. Sometimes just being about to look at what something is doing (via the source) is alot easier than trying to find a scrap of documentation about something on the web. Also, there is alot of code available to learn from available for linux and bsd (as far as low level kernel stuff goes) than there is for Win32.
-- Eric
I'm sorry, but the article referenced seems to imply that it would be legal and ethical to pass laws restricting or eliminating proprietary software licenses. This is totally and absolutely wrong. The copyright owner is the sole person able to determine the conditions of use of the work. To remove this principle eliminates the foundation for the free software movement.
I advocate whatever license you should choose. Personally, I like the BSD license, and dislike the GPL. But if you can only choose from a set of pre-determined licenses, do you really think the GPL is going to be a choice? There are too many vested commercial interests that want the GPL license to go away.
Until such time as the GPL is actually enforced, this kind of talk is nothing but a pointless ego-wank for people trying to impress us with how liberal and/or hip to the community they are.
On a small scale, codifying the GPL just takes the decision on that enforcement out of the hands of the people who produced the code in the first place and give it to an overworked legal system that most of us wouldn't trust as far we can throw it anyway.
On a larger scale, if ALL end-user code has to be open you adversely impact all sorts of things that you never considered in your knee-jerk reaction. Okay, so you might want Word opened so that we can get of these BS proprietary formats; or Outlook opened so the damn thing doesn't propogate infections faster than an open wound in the Black Hole of Calcutta. That's great, and there are real benefits there. Meanwhile though, online gaming goes into the shitter as every client instantly becomes 100% untrustworthy.
And what would it really help, as far as the GNU "ethic" goes? The same people that steal GPL'd code today would continue to do so: whether it's one guy and his pet project with a very limited audience (e.g. MQW) or a megacorp that loves the GPL for helping them cut development cost/time but doesn't go for "that hippy ideology" of actually returning the favour.
Scum will be scum no matter what you do with the laws. "Breaking" the GPL is already illegal, and it's not stopping them so far.
Seems to me that the only reason the utter drivel of the original article even gets a mention (and thanks for wasting 5 minutes of my life, BTW) is that those with an axe to grind about MS will get wood over the idea.
OK, you currently get life plus 70 years. That will allow your great-grandchildren to continue to profit from your work. Work which they had no part in, nor did their parents, nor their grandparents.
Can you explain why you don't think this is long enough?
If you really write the Great American Novel, but its genius is not recognized until 50 years after you're dead ... I say that should just be tough luck for your descendents.
I see no reason for any copyright to extend more than 30 years. If you are still relying financially on something you wrote 30 years ago ... get a day job already, you're a has-been, not a great artist.
As for your wife - if you were smart you saved and invested while you were making the big bucks for 30 years, so she should have plenty of inheritance anyway.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
According to Lessig there is no reason to ban or punish proprietary providers. But this view is hardly consistent with Lessig's view on the future of software copyright law. In Lessig's future system, proprietary providers are severely punished. They lose about 100 years of protection, the current copyright protection of life of author plus 70 year,s compared to five plus five years and then full disclosure.
I think the author misunderstands this. Taking away most of the term of the software copyright is not "punishing" proprietary providers, it continues to reward them for publishing closed code by giving them exclusive rights for ten years. It does reduce their *reward* to a much more reasonable term, since most software is pretty much useless after 10 years. Don't forget that this copyright term is a gift from the government to the author, not a fundamental right.
Meanwhile, those who publish Free Software get no rewards in today's system, and Lessig suggests that they should get some when he says that the government should "encourage" open source. "Encourage" means "reward" desired behavior.
Copyright is an entirely artificial right, constructed for social purposes, not one of those "inalienable" rights in the Declaration of Independance. It is, in fact, more reminiscent of the medieval system of "rights" where the term really meant privileges granted by the feudal system. For example, in many places in Europe the lord had a "right" to sleep with any bride before the husband got a go at her. These kinds of rights can change as society sees fit, according to what is deemed most beneficial.
Perhaps it is best that we reward artists and programmers for their work to provide them an incentive, but this is not a matter of fundamental morality. If you don't want your work copied you can keep it secret, but if you share it with others I see no innate, compelling reason why you should have the power to control how each person uses it should it fall into their hands. In fact, I *do* find it immoral that some should try to restrict use of their work or discoveries in a way that unduly restricts the work's benefit to society in the name of profiteering.
Furthermore, it's unfortunate that this article does not address patents, because even if proprietary sources are divulged ten years from the release of the code, they will remain useless to others if they implement still-active patents held by the author.
The goal of the GPL is software freedom. These freedoms are zero indexed, of course:
* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
I think speaking of a "GNU GPL law" only serves to confound the issue. The issue is software freedom, whether this is something society should value, and what means work best to achieve that end.
The GPL is just a tool.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Mikael
Pawlo.com
I will try to clarify my point in some short parapgraphs.
The issue that I am trying to address and discuss is: if we should and were able to change current copyright law and the way we look at software protection into something else - what would it be?
I can't see a perfect alternative among the present ideas of copyright protection. However, I think some people tend to rule out for example - replacing the copyright statues with GNU GPL - just because they don't like the GNU GPL. My point is that we could instead think of a world where there was something else instead of copyright for computer programs.
Thinking like an economist, I am sure that we need proper incentives for programmers. Therefore I am not convinced that the Free Software Foundation license could replace copyright law all the way. However, thinking like a citizen, I think we need more transparency in the software, thus following Lessig's ideas expressed in Code and other laws of Cyberspace. Somewhere between the GNU GPL and the current copyright protection I think we can find a new balanced solution to protection of computer programs with good incentives for programmers but a greater deal of transparency than what we have today.
Therefore I introduced the Swedish word "lagom" into the debate. I know that my article lacks a definition of "lagom" copyright, but please just consider this the start. I think we have very different views of what "lagom" copyright for computer programs is.
TRIPS, the Berne Convention and the WIPO Copyright Treaty plus the amount of works currently protected by life + seventy copyright statues make me very pessimistic about the possibility to change copyright law. However, we need to start finding good alternatives to todays software protection. Over time, the protection for new computer programs might change. If we do nothing, our children and their children will have to deal with these issues when we are long gone. Well, actually they will deal with these issues no matter what - currently copyrighted will be protected for another 150 years...
Best regards
Mikael
Pawlo.com
Never forget that the BSD and most other license are very weak at protecting our collective work in the current environment. Under BSD, any company could take our code, slightly change a protocol, patent it and sue the original authors,
That is simply not true. Unless their "slight change" introduces a new concept, there is nothing to patent. If it does introduce a new concept then it is the concept that is patented, not the particular software implementation that happens to build on BSD-based software. They could have patented the idea even without doing an implementation! The GPL is no protection against patents.
and even without patent it could sue for frivolous legal reasons or prevent any further work on the original source base.
The GPL is no protection against frivolous law suits either! I could sue you today for anything. GPL versus BSD has nothing to do with it.
Because intellectual property isn't. You can't own something abstrat, only goods. Copyright is a bargain between the government and the people. On the people's side, the government grants a limited monopoly on a particular idea so that the inventors/artists/etc. have a chance to profit from it. This is to promote people to do such things in the first place. On the other hand, on the government's side, the monopoly expires so that all of humanity can eventually enjoy a work.
Intellectual property is not a natural right. It's an artificial one that merely provides incentive. Once a reasonable period of time has elapsed, it should belong to the people. Personally, I favor copyright terms of life or 20 years, whichever is shorter. The number of cases of an author producing (to use the above example) the great American novel and it not being recognized are far fewer than the number of cases where humanity would benefit from works being placed in the public domain.
The last free dictionary is from 1913! It's still pretty good, but the only reason we don't have a more modern one is due to copyright law. I don't think publishing companies would lose anything from 20 year old dictionaries being available freely from gutenberg, but the people would gain a great deal.
Originally, the view prevailed that binary code was not copyrightable because it was obviously (usually) not something created by humans that was readable by them. But by analogy with encrypted cable channels, and because of a general bias towards business interests, that view changed. Today, not only are binaries copyrighted, publishers are permitted to impose onerous contracts on purchasers, something that would be obviously ridiculous if it were done with printed books. In fact, software companies are permitted to get patents without providing a working implementation (often the hard part), they can get a copyright yet fail to comply with fair use doctrines, and they keep trade secrets on stuff that they also claim copyrights on.
What all that means is that we need to rethink what intellectual property should mean for computer programs.
Now, RMS's position, is one way in which one might think about changing copyright law. It's not about some communist utopia (no-cost software may or may not be the side-effect, but it's not the goal), it's about the ability to modify programs that you paid for and share the modifications with others, and for that you need source code. You might imagine an open source requirements in which everybody who sells software and claims copyright is required to ship sources with it, but you cannot redistribute sources or binaries you receive yourself, although you may redistribute patches and other users can buy the base software from the same vendor you did. You might imagine legislating that any software license must give you at least the rights of something like the QPL, protecting commercial interests but allowing free software and giving commercial users source access. You might also imagine a requirement to put works that are not available anymore into the public domain or into some clearinghouse (this is also an issue with out-of-print books).
While some form of proprietary software, as opposed to free software, may be beneficial, I think it is pretty clear that the current legal mechanisms by which proprietary software is protected are not working very well.
It appears that there are a number of confusions in Pawlo's article that I
would like to clear up, if possible.
It is ultimately biased to discuss whether or not "someone wants to make
proprietary software illegal". Proprietary software is, as Pawlo's
article notes, based on copyright law. Copyright law is a construct
created by various legal systems throughout the world, and it makes
proprietary software possible.
Laws exist in Free societies for the good of the public. The question
that we raise in the Free Software Movement is: "When copyright law is
applied to software, does it have a negative or positive effect on
society?" And, "If that effect is negative, what changes must be made so
that the public is best served in the realm of software?"
These are hard questions to consider, and are by and large ignored in
today's Free Software debates. I theorize that they are ignored for two
reasons: (a) none of us in the Free Software community have the means to
change existing copyright law anyway and (b) we already have legal tools
that allow us to work for software freedom within the existing copyright
system. In a sense, we have a working solution to the problem.
The GNU GPL is a legal tool that works within the copyright system to
build a world with software freedom for all. However, the GNU GPL never
tries to do an end-run around existing copyright law, nor could it; it is
a copyright license. The GNU GPL is the interim solution that is designed
to give and defend freedom in a world where proprietary software exists
and is the norm.
In the future, perhaps our congresses, houses of parliament, and political
leaders will be ready to have the debate about how copyright for software
could be changed to truly serve society. The Free Software Movement
should be ready and poised to enter that debate when it begins. However,
we at the FSF by and large don't actively propose ideas of how software
copyright law could be changed to serve society better. It just seems
silly to play "what-if"---focusing on a message that our politicians
aren't ready nor willing to hear. So, we focus on battles we can likely
win: opposition of extending copyright law any further, and a repeal of
the DMCA and DCMA-like laws worldwide.
The Free Software Movement is unique among social movements; we currently
have the means to create the commons we want (i.e., hacking talent) and
the legal tools to defend that commons (i.e., the GNU GPL). I suggest
that we focus on building a better commons and defending the commons we
have, rather than arguing about what we would do if we suddenly became
president or prime minister.
I agree that "what-if" and self-satire are fun games to play at a cocktail
party. However, we have a serious and hard road ahead of us to win
software freedom for computer users. I hope that we can close this debate
that has dragged on and on in our community. I suggest that we focus on
what we need to do in the coming year to defend the software freedom we
have, and to give software freedom to more people who don't have it yet.