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You Can't Oppose Copyright and Support Open Source

Posted by kdawson on from the baby-with-the-bathwater dept.

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.

2 of 550 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The problem with copyright... by Dirtside · · Score: 5, Informative

    In this case you're wrong; anything published before 1923 is now in the public domain, regardless of when the author died. Source: Cornell

    --
    "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
  2. RTFM by dircha · · Score: 5, Informative

    Looks like another college sophomore just discovered the GPL.

    Welcome, sir. To start, why don't you Read the Fine Manual?

    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

    The FSF is an organization committed to the advancement of Free Software. The FSF contends that proprietary (non-Free) software development and distribution is unethical and should cease because it fails to satisfy the 4 essential freedoms of software users.

    Free software is software that satisfies the 4 essential freedoms of users of software. These freedoms are completely independent of Copyright's existence or non-existence. The definition of Free Software makes no mention of copyright.

    Absent the voluntary or involuntary elimination of proprietary software, the Free Software Foundation generally encourages the use of Copyleft. You seem to be confused about the difference between Free Software and Copyleft. Free Software is software that satisfies the 4 essential freedoms of software users. Copyleft, on the other hand, is a licensing strategy employed wherin existing Copyright law is leveraged to further the proliferation of Free Software. There is much non-Copylefted Free Software.

    You also seem to confuse Open Source with Free Software or Copyleft. These are all quite different things.

    Once again, I refer you to the Fine manual:

    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-fr eedom.html

    Having said all this, please consider taking a few minutes to inform yourself in the future before making wild generalizations about people and organizations you know nothing about. And congrats on completing sophomore year!