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You Can't Oppose Copyright and Support Open Source
Reader gbulmash sends us to his essay on the fallacy of those who would abolish copyright. The argument is that without copyright granting an author the right to set licensing terms for his/her work, the GPL could not be enforced. The essay concludes that if you support the GPL or any open source license (other than public domain), your fight should be not about how to abolish copyright, but how to reform copyright.
Pretty please? I'm sorry but a blog rant is not news.
/MLS
Not all of us can make a living being open source gasbags, you know. If it weren't for software patents, I would be a poor man.
Quite wrong, Mr. Perens. There's a large contingent hiding under the open source flag that does not respect copyrights and copies whatever they please. They may not pipe up in this thread but do in others and quite nakedly admit and encourage the piracy of music, videos, and software, and very little is said against them here on Slashdot or elsewhere.
I note that neither you, RMS, nor the FSF has not made the slightest effort, aside from a few feeble posts like the one above, to rid the free software movement of these morally stunted people, even though they'd happily violate the GPL too if they could find some benefit in it. Care to explain yourselves?
Better yet, since you profess beliefs in "a particular set of rights", how about a nice big press release from the FSF saying that people who illegally copy proprietary software and other media are not welcome in the free software movement and that all members should speak against them?