Slashdot Mirror
New Scientist Tries Out Copyleft
uchian writes: "New Scientist has an article about The GPL, open source, and how attempts are being made to apply the philosopy to areas other than software. Little new ground is covered, but it is interesting that the article itself is "Copyleft", so you are free to redistribute, modify and copy as long as long as your derivative work is also copyleft."
About 2 years ago I wrote The Open Company Manifesto. (Sorry for the self promotion, but it is related to this posting.)
How to Download YouTube Videos
The problems with open music, however, haven't put people off trying open source methods elsewhere.
;-) we get from unselfish artists.
They actually forgot to mention GNUArt which is my attempt to apply the GNU General Public License to Art.
We also opened a Gallery which we slowly fill with whatever quality stuff (mostly music and photographs but, hey, the one who criticize are supposed to help too
That's it, hope it'll raise some interest.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
They seem to define copyleft as "We have a copyright but we are waiving it so that it can be redistributed".
In their words - "We haven't given up our copyright on this article, but we have agreed to waive many of the exclusive rights a copyright normally bestows."
So if you abuse their copyleft notion then you will find out that they do still have a legal copyright.
I personally think that copyleft is silly. It should be copyfree but I guess that isn't as catchy as copyleft.
<snip>
Stallman's move DID NOT resonate round the computer science community and now there are NOT thousands of similar projects. The star of the movement is NOT Linux, RATHER WINDOWS XP, an operating system created by MIT student BILL GATES in the early 1990s and installed on around 180,000 million computers worldwide.
What sets open source software apart from commercial software is the fact that it HAS A VIRAL NATURE, in both the political and the economic sense. If you want to use a commercial product such as Windows XP you WILL BE HAPPY FOREVER. But if you want to run Linux or another open source package, you can do so without paying a penny--although IT WILL BE EQUIVALENT TO SUPPORTING THE COMMUNIST PARTY.
</snip>
Neither GPL or copyleft are copyright free. Instead they leverage the power of copyright to function. If GPL were turned down in court, say, it would mean all GPL code reverts with full copyright to the original copyright owner. It would not mean the stuff would become free, quite the opposite. Their copyleft definition mirrors GPL very well, and 'copyfree' would have very wrong connotations.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
From opencola's formula page
An important note: this is *not* the recipe for "OpenCola" -- that is, the canned beverage from OpenCola that you may have received at a trade show, or other venue or outlet. Making canned cola requires millions of dollars in abstruse gear and manufacturing gizmos. It's easier to make nerve gas than manufacture cola. This is a kitchen-sink recipe that you can make all on your own. It is *our* kitchen-sink recipe. We figured it out somewhere between coding the COLA SDK and debugging the Linux build of the clerver.
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
Does the idea of copyleft make sense for things other than software? I'm thinking of the phrase: "Redistribute, copy, and modify, so long as your derivative work is also copyleft." If, for example, research results are published under copyleft, would that mean that any subsequent work that cites the research would also have to be copyleft? If the research were used to create a device, would the device have to be copyleft? The broad definition of "derivative work" is making me somewhat uncomfortable ... I want my research to be used for any reason, anywhere, by anyone, without worrying about the implications for them.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Announce that my DNA is copyleft, from this day forward.
If any cute Geekgirl wishes to gain access to my DNA, please send a picture and an essay on the effects of GPL and the software industry and what effects this will have on humanity in whole.
Redheads with green eyes can skip the essay.
Thank you.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Every article or image that is produced by copyright concious organizations is marked as being copyrighted, with the © and owners name.
Its high time that there was a unique, instantly recognisable symbol for everything that is released under one of the new copyright licences.
The article in question does not have a symbol to mark it as Open Content or Copyleft or Free Content. Unmarked articles are by default, copyrighted upon creation according to the Berne Convention, so if the article was not about copyleft content, one would immediately assume that it was copyrighted if you were to come across it. You would immediately refrain from using it for fear of being sued, and they could claim that it was not freed, because it is not marked as freed.
If this idea of freed content and the freed content itself are to spread, then all content released under these licences needs to be clearly marked as freed; as clearly as the IP that is traditionally copyrighted.
At this page we have created a set of graphic devices to solve this problem.
Using the old © inverted is about as inelegant a solution as you could dream up. It sends the wrong signals, that in some way, Open Content or Copyleft is "upside down", "wrong way around" or the polar opposite of Copyright, which it is not. Copyright is seen, almost universally, as A Good Thing®. The opposite of a good thing is a bad thing. The use of the inverted © conveys a kind of "upside down crucifix" vibe which is counterproductive.
The new symbol solves this problem, scales graphically for both print and web, and conveys the idea that the properties that it is attached to are licenced content.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
I just spotted an open source tomato. Inside are little seeds, that contain all the code to construct the tomato yourself. You can do this, but you have to include the little seeds yourself as well. You can even modify it, but the seeds will have to be modified also!
The whole thing was produced by "Nature". It can be used in open source sandwiches, open source burgers etc. as well!
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
"And so the experiment goes on. As a contribution to it, New Scientist has agreed to issue this article under a copyleft. That means you can copy it, redistribute it, reprint it in whole or in part, and generally play around with it as long as you, too, release your version under a copyleft and abide by the other terms and conditions in the licence."
I guess I'm nit-picking a bit, but there is a subtlety they missed in the article: you only have to release the modified code under copy left if you plan to release it. So if I were to, say, fix all of the problems with the 2.5 series Linux distros, I don't have to release the source code. If I release it, then it has to be copyleft, but the choice to release it is still mine.
I guess it would be pointless to modify an article and not redistribute it, but the phrasing above misrepresents copy-left.
BlackGriffen
It's a noble idea, but you really need to go and have a careful read about what copyleft is. The most important thing about copyleft is that it is fully copyrighted. Everything else depends on that. If it's not copyrighted, you can't enforce the rest of the terms, which allow very specific exceptions to the copyright.
For copyrighted work to change into copyleft, you have to add license terms. There is, in fact, nothing to stop any copy right holder adding copyleft terms to any existing copyright work. Copyleft adds rights.
What would be a problem is enforcing it on all copyrighted works in general, because that punishes rights holders. To enforce the copyleft, you'd have to keep the sanctity of copyright, while adding a whole new set of mandatory licensing terms. We could do it with a determined enough political will, but it'd be a hard one to explain to your average Jane Voter or Joe Politico, let alone Karl Corporate, who would vomit blood at the very thought of having any of his precious rights diluted one second before the final expiry.
I do honestly think that we're better of just having copyright expire after a fixed term and having the work enter the public domain. We'd be better off campaiging for our current Disney whoring politicians to stop extending copyright time limits than to try for a hard to understand, hard to enforce compromise.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Though they talk about Stallman a lot, the article tends to blur 'free software' and 'open source'. I could see RMS forking this article.
And also, from the article: "[Linux source code] contributions are reviewed by a panel and the best ones are added to Linux." (emphasis mine)
Yeah, reviewed by a panel of one?
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective companies. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2002 OSDN.
I'm afraid that the numerous reproductions of the article in comments on this page can't both be "owned by the Poster" and meet the conditions of the New Statesman licence regarding redistribution. Sue each other at will.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
This is a great post and I'm personally going to make a note of your bolded/emphasized summary of the GPL, because it is so clear. (I'm trying to work on a Master's thesis on the question of whether GPL-ish licenses have any place, beyond software, in the context of international development. Your bolds and important pauses make it clear what the GPL is.)
I found one aspect of your post confusing, though, at first.
Q. If, for example, research results are published under copyleft, would that mean that any subsequent work that cites the research would also have to be copyleft? [...]
A. [...] If we're talking specifically about the GPL, then yes, that's exactly what it means.
In fact, that isn't what it means. (Although you may have been mostly referring in your response to the latter part of the original poster's question, which I omitted above, I didn't realize it at first.)
As you explained later for those who took the time to read your full post --
In your case, if you find some GPL research that you want to build on, but without making your research GPL, then treat the GPL work as a fully copyrighted work. You can quote selectively from it using the existing fair use defence [...].
IMHO, this is exactly right. The license, GPL or otherwise, is a copyright license and as such, restricts only what copyright will allow. If normal copyright would permit the citation, (i.e., footnotes/bibliographies/appropriately-brief quotations), then you have nothing to fear from copyleft.