...but merely point out that you're making a distinction that BSD doesn't consider valid.
You don't speak for all BSD users. Also you pointedly said my view was unreasonable. Nothing you've said points out how my view is unreasonable, what you've said is what I already know: that my view is different from the opinion some posters here. I appreciate your contribution to the conversation, but a difference of opinion does not imply a lack of reason.
Perhaps one of the developers will chime in and help clear this up. I believe Talkback builds are put together to catch crashes and return valuable data back to the development team. A similar question could be asked of coredumps on Unix boxes—they help because they allow post-mortem analysis.
Theo would have to have gone to a little trouble to achieve this and I don't see how preventing people from just selling exact copies of the official CD's somehow hurts the community.
Debian goes to some trouble to produce multiple systems for multiple machines too. Debian needs contributions and cooperative development help as well. But Debian allows people to copy official ISOs (and sell them). I'm not interested in selling any copies of either, just sharing them at no charge with friends. Neither production effort nor financial need are revealing hinges for this issue.
If all you use is OpenBSD i386, then just ftp/wget/rsync the i386 tree and then burn your bootable i386 CD.
The number of platforms supported and the FTP/wget/rsync availability are completely besides the point. I realize functionally equivalent duplicates are possible and I know how to make them. I'm interested in sharing an exact duplicate with my friends, not a functional equivalent.
People who pay for the official OpenBSD and abide by Theo de Raadt's layout copyright are the ones who cannot share copies of official OpenBSD discs with friends. These people could obtain ISOs online (as per the FAQ) but they choose to help the project instead. It seems ironic to me that only the people who are trying to help cannot make this kind of copy to share. With OpenBSD, unlike Debian, those who cooperate are under a limit that those who violate are not.
I don't think paying OpenBSD users need to be restricted from producing this copy. They are the ones who have demonstrated they want to give. I understand the need for money, there is no need to review that. I am among those computer users happy to give money to support Free Software efforts. As a member of the Free Software community I maintain that financial need should not interfere with my software freedom.
People don't like being limited like this when we're talking about audio CDs, DVDs, or e-books. They want to share their legally obtained data with their friends. I don't like it either, so I don't pay the publisher to get audio CDs, and I have never bought a DVD or an e-book. Similarly, I will not buy official OpenBSD. I have switched to Debian because Debian lets me copy the official disc ISOs and burn copies for my friends.
Please read carefully the extent of my comparison; I am not saying these products are all the same. I am aware proprietary products are very much unlike OpenBSD in most respects. The one respect in which they are the same is the restriction from producing an identical copy of the disc for a friend.
I am eager to contribute to Free Software causes regardless of their focus. I want to encourage Free Software development and sales. But I want software freedom in exchange.
Don't install alpha products. Wait for them to mature. They make whole mozilla to crash constantly.
Last time I looked, helping to find bugs was part of the communal development of Free Software. We should try stuff out, report bugs, and supply patches so we can all have better software. If we "[w]ait for them to mature" they'll mature far more slowly (if at all) and we'll be waiting longer.
(Another word that comes to mind is "ingratitude.")
The OpenBSD team doesn't ask for gratitude, they ask for money and they ask for everyone to act in accordance with Theo de Raadt's claimed copyright on the CD layout. I have provided both.
If you want to help him out, send him another $30 and give that new copy to your friend.
And place my friend in a position where she can't legally share copies easily? No thanks, that's not being a good friend. For me and my friends, sharing is a big part of the relationship. We are strong proponents of selling Free Software and a big part of that means understanding the "Free" in Free Software refers to freedom, not price; we should be allowed to share software with each other if we want to without hassle. Most Free Software gives us the opportunity to do that without jumping through hoops like reconstructing discs with a different layout than the layout de Raadt claims a copyright on.
OpenBSD is Theo's
job. Think about that one for a bit.
I don't have to think about it one bit—like you said, (placing the emphasis elsewhere to illustrate my point) "OpenBSD is Theo's job." not my job. It is not my responsibility to make sure Theo de Raadt (or anyone else involved with OpenBSD) makes any money with OpenBSD.
In order for his job to bring in enough revenue to pay his wages, he has to sell something. That something happens to be an official CD set.
You don't read very carefully. Nowhere did I object to paying for OpenBSD. This should have been obvious to you, for if I had such an objection, I never would have bought OpenBSD 3.0 in the first place. The assistance I want to offer cannot be had at the price of my ability to easily share, therefore I have switched to another operating system.
As I made clear before, I understand why de Raadt and the rest of the OpenBSD team sell discs and swag. It's the same reason why they don't distribute ISOs of OpenBSD discs. But they should not put a barrier to sharing in my way. Their barrier only impedes paying customers like me who abide by copyright law (even going so far as to take it on faith that de Raadt's CD layout copyright is valid) and won't share what we're not allowed to share. Since de Raadt's license on the CD layout prevents me from easily sharing with my friends, I choose not to pay to be hassled. My friends and I most recently chose Debian GNU/Linux where sharing and donations are encouraged.
If it weren't for the no-sale clause in section 3 of the license ("3. You may not charge a fee for the Software...") it could qualify as a non-copylefted Free Software license. As it is, it's not Free Software at all.
Its also not exactly hard to make bootable CDs. Theo copyrighted the layout and only forbad SELLING OpenBSD CDs. He never said you and your buds can't make their own and give away copies.
That's not quite right, according to what I was told by people on the OpenBSD team.
I bought a copy of OpenBSD 3.0 and a t-shirt (the one with the Blowfish code on the back) because I wanted to support the OpenBSD team. I got the order in the mail and tried it out. I was surprised to learn there were stickers and a song included in the deal. Theo de Raadt's claim of copyright on the CD layout threw me—I thought it was Free Software where people could share with their friends. I learned you had to copy the data in a certain way using "[n]ormal dump, tar, cp operations" according to Wim Vandeputte who patiently answered my questions about making a copy for my friends. According to Vandeputte, you aren't allowed to use dd to make an ISO (the preferred format for sharing CD images over a network) and the FAQ's the ISO portion say a similar thing (I asked de Raadt about my concerns but his answers weren't as clear as I had hoped). The hinge issue is not selling copies, it's distributing copies that duplicate the allegedly copyrighted layout (I'm still not sure if such a copyright is valid). This copyright isn't mentioned anywhere on the OpenBSD 3.0 documentation that came with my copy.
de Raadt's copyright only hinders people who are trying to help him and his project. I bought OpenBSD 3.0 and the Blowfish t-shirt (the one with the Blowfish code on the back) because I wanted to help the project. If I wanted to get a copy of the discs at no charge, I could have downloaded and burned the ISOs that are already out there. de Raadt doesn't need to cajole people into contributing to the project by claiming a copyright on the discs' layout and restricting duplication to force a different layout.
I ultimately decided I wasn't going to help someone make it harder for me to share with my friends. I'll avoid OpenBSD and recommend something else to everyone, like Debian GNU/Linux, which I'm currently using. I'll be happy to reassess OpenBSD should the situation change (including going back to OpenBSD and buying releases as I had planned), but sharing freely is important to me and my friends.
I understand that the OpenBSD project needs money to keep the project moving ahead and I'm happy to give OpenBSD money, but I'm not going to pay for hassle. Their FAQ says "If for some reason you want to download a CD image, try searching the mailing list archives for possible sources." so they know the images are out there and they know de Raadt's layout copyright isn't preventing anyone from illegally sharing images. It seems unwise to me to hinder people who pay for official copies. These people most likely pay because they are looking to help the project; they will continue to pay for the CDs if the CDs are fully legally copyable. These are not the people to aggravate. In the end, I decided I will give my money to other Free Software efforts that don't hassle me when it comes to sharing.
I'm all for cleanly-written slick Objective-C apps like OmniWeb
How would you know how "cleanly written" OmniWeb is? For its entire history on NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP OmniWeb was proprietary. Have they made it Free Software, did you hack on it, or are you just guessing?
Allow anybody to copy/share/resell any work they have, but such a transfer would require a compulsory royalty to the orignal creator (rights can't be reassigned to corporations).
I don't think this is a good idea because it could stifle our freedom to share. Mandating payment schemes by law shares similar weaknesses to the CBDTPA (neé SSSCA) which have been discussed much on Slashdot so I won't reargue those points here. Mandating payment in general is a problem because the copyright holder could be inaccessible or uncooperative thus effectively denying my freedom to share the work. The mandated payment would have to survive fluctuating economies so defining "negligable" is hard and leaves open the chance that the price is so high I again am restricted in my freedom to share. Much better to get the market to recognize that you are not guaranteed a livelihood doing anything. The burden of shifting your business to meet the market's demands (and clearly Napster and widespread duplication and distribution online demonstrates people want to share) is the sole responsibility of the organization in business—this struggle is just part of being in business. In short, it's not my job to make sure your business plan works for you.
Something that needs to be considered is whether we need publishers. It could be that, like doylie making that died when paper doylies could be stamped out by the hundreds, technological shifts have simply outmoded publishers. We still need editors, proofreaders, and typesetters, but if we can distribute and print books all on our own, we might not need publishers in the same capacity we once did. Thus attempting to save their jobs would be time and money better spent elsewhere.
However, I have some ideas that could work. Get the market to base their sales on things that aren't copyable such as expertise (like the aforementioned editing, typesetting, and proofreading) and admission to special events (readings and signings). I'm not claiming these ideas are original, I'm saying they're viable enough to try.
Finally, we need to drive the idea that not all works should be treated the same way. For some works you need the ability to modify the work so it can be kept up to date. RMS (who has put some thought into these things in his speech on copyright) identifies works that need to be edited by everyone as "functional works"—works whose primary purpose is to get a job done. Examples include dictionaries, encyclopedias, and manuals. But other works you want to be able to share verbatim (not that editing the work should be forbidden but the primary pleasure is seeing them as they are). Such works would include entertainment books like Lord of the Rings. The main problem I have with RMS' particular breakdown of copyrightable works is that a lot of works fall into more than one of his three categories (functional works, representative works, and aesthetic works). But the concept that uniformity is required hinders our freedom.
The difficulty of getting non-traditional information in ad spots reminds me of AdBusters trying to get TV airtime for their Uncommercials because they're both having trouble getting non-traditional spots in ad slots and they both bring public awareness to their trouble.
One of the big reasons I'm against Flash is I don't know of a Free Software implementation of it. Another big reason I'm against Flash is the lack of accessibility—as far as I know there's no such thing as a Flash user stylesheet, so it's possible you could make a Flash animation I could not easily read (or see) which goes against the a major advantage of the rest of typical WWW pages.
When I put these two reasons together, it's enough for me to reject Flash altogether. Also, I don't find Flash to be a marker of high quality thoughtful presentation that is worth my time to download over my slow connection. I think the questioner needs to focus on writing prose (difficult to do, but very low bandwidth and it can survive the test of time far better than Flash ever will).
The GPL and other licenses are legal documents. Which means common sense does not always apply.
Much of what you say is spot-on, but this leaves me wondering what part of common sense says you shouldn't defend your copyright in a case where the license encourages sharing? What part of common sense says Robertson should be allowed to infringe the GNU GPL?
Given the already shaky nature of open source licenses in the dog eat dog world of commercialism, it is a GOOD thing that groups like the FSF are "nitpicking" this issue.
Actually, this is a golden opportunity to learn the difference between the freedom-minded free software movement and the freedom-dismissing open source movement. The GNU GPL is a copylefted free software license. The open source initiative did little more than place it in their list of approved licenses. Calling the GPL an open source license misrepresents the philosophy and authorship of the GPL. Defending software freedom is very much at the heart of this issue.
Fortunately the FSF handles many cases like this every year and the vast majority of them are amicably resolved long before anyone goes to court. The NuSphere MySQL case is the exception, not the rule.
Correct, and your post is not a troll regardless of what the moderators say.
Reading some of the other commentary on this issue, I think the go-along-to-get-along mentality is the GNU GPL's weakest link. There's little difference between a copyleft and non-copyleft free software license if the copyright holder is spineless.
I agree that the guy is playing fast and loose with the rules, but I think we should give him a chance by waiting until he meets his deadline.
That's preposterous. What you're saying is 'I know Robertson is violating the license he agreed to when he built his project, but we should let him continue to violate the license until he tells us he's comfortable.' (after all, he sets the deadline you're saying we should be waiting for).
If he wants to be able to do what he's doing, he should have chosen a non-copylefted free software project to base his work on. He didn't pick solely non-copylefted free software. He chose code covered by the GNU GPL, a copylefted free software license. Now he's in violation. The question is will the copyright holders whose license he's violating defend their license or not? This is why it is important to care about software freedom, kids. This is why copyleft is an important concept and developers need to pay attention to licensing.
Why is there this reverence for the supposed genius of the auteur/artist, anyway?
Because a large portion of European copyright law is based on it ("moral rights")—contrary to freedom-loving Americans, there are those that think the author has non-transferrable rights to the work that even go so far as to allow retraction of the work if it's not received according to the author's wishes. A previous/. story talked about this where some half-baked/. submitter agreed with Michael Fraase's article that America should adopt European artists rights, perhaps not realizing that doing so would grant an author the power to squelch parodies of their work. Moral rights, like "property" talk and "idea protection" (a growing body of law that will be the next battle for freedom-minded Americans) create the ability for copyright to limit the use and distribution of ideas (which copyright explicitly does not protect) instead of expressions.
What Fraase's conclusion doesn't acknowledge a full awareness of is that US copyright law evolved as a utilitarian bargain among authors, publishers, and the public, while European copyright evolved as a way to reward artists and authors for building culture. As Vaidhyanathan explains in his book far better than I can here, Mark Twain was integral to American copyright, he fought for perpetual copyright (see Twain's "The Great Republic's Peanut Stand") so his heirs and estate would be benefitted forever. He liked the control moral rights gave authors. He thought the public's claim on his works was unjustified and therefore undeserved. Unfortunately his influence exceeded his prescience and he didn't realize moral rights help threaten, not support, creativity. Modern corporations share Twain's motivation—greed—and they share the same conclusion as Twain—everlasting copyright power.
Instead of reading the all-too-short Fraase article, read Siva Vaidhyanathan's "Copyrights and Copywrongs" (ISBN: 0-8147-8806-8) for more on the exchange that built American copyright and why preserving the idea-expression dichotomy is so important for freedom and maintaining democracy.
Although I disagree with the use of the propaganda term "piracy", this summary from a footnote in the landmark Diamond Rio case, the case that opened the door for portable MP3 players, is otherwise agreeable:
"Whether or not piracy causes such financial harm is a subject of dispute. Critics of the industry's piracy loss figures have noted that a willingness to download illicit files for free does not necessarily correlate to lost sales, for the simple reason that persons willing to accept an item for free often will not purchase the same item, even if no longer freely available. See Lewis Kurlantzick & Jacqueline E. Pennino, The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 and the Formation of Copyright Policy, 45 J. Copyright Soc'y U.S.A. 497, 506 (1998). Critics further note that the price of commercially available recordings already reflects the existence of copying and the benefits and harms such copying causes; thus, they contend, the current price of recordings offsets, at least in part, the losses incurred by the industry from home taping and piracy."
To which I'd also add that even if one were to pay for the music CD, it's not clear that one would pay the publisher for it. There are venues to legally obtain the music CD without paying the publisher (public libraries and any second-hand sale) in which case multiple people can listen to the music as the music licensee but only result in one sale for the publisher. Your burger example doesn't help eludicate understanding of copyright at all. A burger cook working for someone else doesn't hold a copyright on the burgers.
The simple fact is, the result of my thinking is MY property, and I have a right to control what happens to it, be it placing it into the public domain, or selling copies of it to make money.
Too simple; simplistic, really. I'm not sure what you mean by the "result" of your thoughts, but your thoughts are not copyrightable, copyright law in the US only protects certain expression of ideas. How much control you have over that expression is not anywhere near as simple as you have made it out to be (your burger scenario, for example, would not allow me to do as I wished with the burger; sometimes there are patents that can interfere with your ability to legally distribute a work copyrighted to you). You should find the book I recommended earlier (ISBN: 0-8147-8806-8). It will painlessly get you up to speed in understanding copyright. I found it a worthwhile read and I hope you do too.
'Hi, I'm a thief, but don't let that make you think any less of me.'
Unauthorized duplication is not stealing, no matter how many people fail to recognize the difference between physical property and intangible concepts. Please don't refer to it as such. What johnnythan admitted to is illegal, but you'll lose any rational argument about copyright if you insist on talking about copyright infringement as theft of property. Siva Vaidhyanathan has written an excellent book called "Copyrights and Copywrongs" in which he explains the dangers of thinking about copyright as property law. I highly recommend it because it is easily read, concise, and very well researched.
I think you'll find a lot of people who use namecalling ("raving nut") aren't that familiar with RMS' insightfulness, the importance of software freedom, or the fine distinctions he applies which allow him (and us) to think more clearly.
I usually find such mud slinging to be an effect of online discussion—for whatever reason, some people feel free to unjustifiably speak ill of him online when they would not do so in real life in a face-to-face encounter with someone engaging in an otherwise polite conversation about software freedom.
That's a very clueless essay, actually. The silly question the essayist poses doesn't address the copyleft issue at all. It doesn't even give the reader the impression the author is aware of software freedoms. Instead it looks like just another RMS-bashing screed (complete with tired namecalling). Fair use, picking another program to base one's changes on, the problem of conflating physical and conceptual works (resulting in thinking of copyrights and patents as "property"), and writing one's program from scratch are some of the overlooked issues in "Nick"'s tirade. You'd do well to avoid this reference.
The question is, why should they have chosen [the] GPL for this product?
Because unlike so many other free software licenses, the GNU GPL is written by an organization well-versed in both programming and law, it now has genuine court time under its belt (with a judge that shows no indication of finding it to be an invalid license), and it has language to handle a number of cases that come up (including patented code, maintaining software freedoms for derivative works, distinguishing between linking and executing as a separate program).
More importantly, they should have selected a license they understood and agreed with. I cringed early on when Shawn Gordon indicated his ignorance:
I didn't really care so much, or pay attention to all the licensing stuff...
There's the first problem. People who ignore software licensing can not run a software business effectively. Gordon should have taken the time to learn about licensing or he should have hired someone to train him on the details of licensing. Licensing is as important to your code as your code is to your business. If you ignore licensing, you will regret it. If you find out too late you don't agree with the license you chose, you might have already done something not in line with your business plan. This is nobody's fault but his.
If this product is a derivative work, then they were forced to use [the] GPL.
Nobody is ever forced to use the GPL because nobody is forced to derive their program from a GPL'd work. It's important not to overlook that they could have written their code from scratch or based their work on something else.
In that case, charging high reproduction fees to create a
barrier to users (as Mr. Gordon frankly admits he is doing) is a violation at the very least of the spirit of GPL, if not a legal violation.
It is not any kind of violation. You are encouraged to charge as much money as you can get for distributing free software. The "free" in free software refers to freedom, not price, and giving away your free software is wasting an opportunity to make money for development.
In this case he has no right to complain about people attempting to find clever ways to get their hands on source code without paying...
Gordon does appear rather unclear on the GPL. But, not paying attention "to all the licensing stuff" will do that to you.
As for selling GPL source, this is permitted, though I thought that there was some cap on price, based on reasonable distribution expenses (media, shipping, overhead, etc.)
I like it how people will advocate free software, yet they do not know how to program. At that [point] you can no longer claim you are doing it for the freedom of software, but instead for no-cost software
The freedoms of free software don't require you to be a programmer. You can take advantage of them by hiring someone to modify software for you (which is how some consultants make money) or learn a small bit of programming to do an easy job without becoming a well-versed in programming. We collectively leverage the benefits of software freedom when people inspect source code and engage in openly sharing bugs and security/privacy flaws.
The free software movement speaks to all computer users, not just programmers.
Also, not all free software is available for no money. I advocate that people should charge as much as they can for distributing free software. It's an opportunity to make some money to fund free software development that shouldn't be wasted.
(i.e. they are blood-sucking leeches)
Your namecalling deserves a troll moderation. But more importantly, you assume that because someone intends to make money from software they deserve to make money from software. The free market says that this assumption is not valid. Microsoft antitrust problems aside, a competitive marketplace determines how much money one makes selling software and software services. It is unreasonable to think you are owed money merely because you expect to be paid.
It seems the free software community has tons more advocates than people doing actual work...
It's great that more people are talking about freedom and not at all unusual that most of these people are not programmers. After all, most people are not programmers.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't speak for all BSD users. Also you pointedly said my view was unreasonable. Nothing you've said points out how my view is unreasonable, what you've said is what I already know: that my view is different from the opinion some posters here. I appreciate your contribution to the conversation, but a difference of opinion does not imply a lack of reason.
Perhaps one of the developers will chime in and help clear this up. I believe Talkback builds are put together to catch crashes and return valuable data back to the development team. A similar question could be asked of coredumps on Unix boxes—they help because they allow post-mortem analysis.
Debian goes to some trouble to produce multiple systems for multiple machines too. Debian needs contributions and cooperative development help as well. But Debian allows people to copy official ISOs (and sell them). I'm not interested in selling any copies of either, just sharing them at no charge with friends. Neither production effort nor financial need are revealing hinges for this issue.
The number of platforms supported and the FTP/wget/rsync availability are completely besides the point. I realize functionally equivalent duplicates are possible and I know how to make them. I'm interested in sharing an exact duplicate with my friends, not a functional equivalent.
People who pay for the official OpenBSD and abide by Theo de Raadt's layout copyright are the ones who cannot share copies of official OpenBSD discs with friends. These people could obtain ISOs online (as per the FAQ) but they choose to help the project instead. It seems ironic to me that only the people who are trying to help cannot make this kind of copy to share. With OpenBSD, unlike Debian, those who cooperate are under a limit that those who violate are not.
I don't think paying OpenBSD users need to be restricted from producing this copy. They are the ones who have demonstrated they want to give. I understand the need for money, there is no need to review that. I am among those computer users happy to give money to support Free Software efforts. As a member of the Free Software community I maintain that financial need should not interfere with my software freedom.
People don't like being limited like this when we're talking about audio CDs, DVDs, or e-books. They want to share their legally obtained data with their friends. I don't like it either, so I don't pay the publisher to get audio CDs, and I have never bought a DVD or an e-book. Similarly, I will not buy official OpenBSD. I have switched to Debian because Debian lets me copy the official disc ISOs and burn copies for my friends.
Please read carefully the extent of my comparison; I am not saying these products are all the same. I am aware proprietary products are very much unlike OpenBSD in most respects. The one respect in which they are the same is the restriction from producing an identical copy of the disc for a friend.
I am eager to contribute to Free Software causes regardless of their focus. I want to encourage Free Software development and sales. But I want software freedom in exchange.
Last time I looked, helping to find bugs was part of the communal development of Free Software. We should try stuff out, report bugs, and supply patches so we can all have better software. If we "[w]ait for them to mature" they'll mature far more slowly (if at all) and we'll be waiting longer.
The OpenBSD team doesn't ask for gratitude, they ask for money and they ask for everyone to act in accordance with Theo de Raadt's claimed copyright on the CD layout. I have provided both.
And place my friend in a position where she can't legally share copies easily? No thanks, that's not being a good friend. For me and my friends, sharing is a big part of the relationship. We are strong proponents of selling Free Software and a big part of that means understanding the "Free" in Free Software refers to freedom, not price; we should be allowed to share software with each other if we want to without hassle. Most Free Software gives us the opportunity to do that without jumping through hoops like reconstructing discs with a different layout than the layout de Raadt claims a copyright on.
I don't have to think about it one bit—like you said, (placing the emphasis elsewhere to illustrate my point) "OpenBSD is Theo's job." not my job. It is not my responsibility to make sure Theo de Raadt (or anyone else involved with OpenBSD) makes any money with OpenBSD.
You don't read very carefully. Nowhere did I object to paying for OpenBSD. This should have been obvious to you, for if I had such an objection, I never would have bought OpenBSD 3.0 in the first place. The assistance I want to offer cannot be had at the price of my ability to easily share, therefore I have switched to another operating system.
As I made clear before, I understand why de Raadt and the rest of the OpenBSD team sell discs and swag. It's the same reason why they don't distribute ISOs of OpenBSD discs. But they should not put a barrier to sharing in my way. Their barrier only impedes paying customers like me who abide by copyright law (even going so far as to take it on faith that de Raadt's CD layout copyright is valid) and won't share what we're not allowed to share. Since de Raadt's license on the CD layout prevents me from easily sharing with my friends, I choose not to pay to be hassled. My friends and I most recently chose Debian GNU/Linux where sharing and donations are encouraged.
If it weren't for the no-sale clause in section 3 of the license ("3. You may not charge a fee for the Software...") it could qualify as a non-copylefted Free Software license. As it is, it's not Free Software at all.
That's not quite right, according to what I was told by people on the OpenBSD team.
I bought a copy of OpenBSD 3.0 and a t-shirt (the one with the Blowfish code on the back) because I wanted to support the OpenBSD team. I got the order in the mail and tried it out. I was surprised to learn there were stickers and a song included in the deal. Theo de Raadt's claim of copyright on the CD layout threw me—I thought it was Free Software where people could share with their friends. I learned you had to copy the data in a certain way using "[n]ormal dump, tar, cp operations" according to Wim Vandeputte who patiently answered my questions about making a copy for my friends. According to Vandeputte, you aren't allowed to use dd to make an ISO (the preferred format for sharing CD images over a network) and the FAQ's the ISO portion say a similar thing (I asked de Raadt about my concerns but his answers weren't as clear as I had hoped). The hinge issue is not selling copies, it's distributing copies that duplicate the allegedly copyrighted layout (I'm still not sure if such a copyright is valid). This copyright isn't mentioned anywhere on the OpenBSD 3.0 documentation that came with my copy.
de Raadt's copyright only hinders people who are trying to help him and his project. I bought OpenBSD 3.0 and the Blowfish t-shirt (the one with the Blowfish code on the back) because I wanted to help the project. If I wanted to get a copy of the discs at no charge, I could have downloaded and burned the ISOs that are already out there. de Raadt doesn't need to cajole people into contributing to the project by claiming a copyright on the discs' layout and restricting duplication to force a different layout.
I ultimately decided I wasn't going to help someone make it harder for me to share with my friends. I'll avoid OpenBSD and recommend something else to everyone, like Debian GNU/Linux, which I'm currently using. I'll be happy to reassess OpenBSD should the situation change (including going back to OpenBSD and buying releases as I had planned), but sharing freely is important to me and my friends.
I understand that the OpenBSD project needs money to keep the project moving ahead and I'm happy to give OpenBSD money, but I'm not going to pay for hassle. Their FAQ says "If for some reason you want to download a CD image, try searching the mailing list archives for possible sources." so they know the images are out there and they know de Raadt's layout copyright isn't preventing anyone from illegally sharing images. It seems unwise to me to hinder people who pay for official copies. These people most likely pay because they are looking to help the project; they will continue to pay for the CDs if the CDs are fully legally copyable. These are not the people to aggravate. In the end, I decided I will give my money to other Free Software efforts that don't hassle me when it comes to sharing.
How would you know how "cleanly written" OmniWeb is? For its entire history on NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP OmniWeb was proprietary. Have they made it Free Software, did you hack on it, or are you just guessing?
I don't think this is a good idea because it could stifle our freedom to share. Mandating payment schemes by law shares similar weaknesses to the CBDTPA (neé SSSCA) which have been discussed much on Slashdot so I won't reargue those points here. Mandating payment in general is a problem because the copyright holder could be inaccessible or uncooperative thus effectively denying my freedom to share the work. The mandated payment would have to survive fluctuating economies so defining "negligable" is hard and leaves open the chance that the price is so high I again am restricted in my freedom to share. Much better to get the market to recognize that you are not guaranteed a livelihood doing anything. The burden of shifting your business to meet the market's demands (and clearly Napster and widespread duplication and distribution online demonstrates people want to share) is the sole responsibility of the organization in business—this struggle is just part of being in business. In short, it's not my job to make sure your business plan works for you.
Something that needs to be considered is whether we need publishers. It could be that, like doylie making that died when paper doylies could be stamped out by the hundreds, technological shifts have simply outmoded publishers. We still need editors, proofreaders, and typesetters, but if we can distribute and print books all on our own, we might not need publishers in the same capacity we once did. Thus attempting to save their jobs would be time and money better spent elsewhere.
However, I have some ideas that could work. Get the market to base their sales on things that aren't copyable such as expertise (like the aforementioned editing, typesetting, and proofreading) and admission to special events (readings and signings). I'm not claiming these ideas are original, I'm saying they're viable enough to try.
Finally, we need to drive the idea that not all works should be treated the same way. For some works you need the ability to modify the work so it can be kept up to date. RMS (who has put some thought into these things in his speech on copyright) identifies works that need to be edited by everyone as "functional works"—works whose primary purpose is to get a job done. Examples include dictionaries, encyclopedias, and manuals. But other works you want to be able to share verbatim (not that editing the work should be forbidden but the primary pleasure is seeing them as they are). Such works would include entertainment books like Lord of the Rings. The main problem I have with RMS' particular breakdown of copyrightable works is that a lot of works fall into more than one of his three categories (functional works, representative works, and aesthetic works). But the concept that uniformity is required hinders our freedom.
The difficulty of getting non-traditional information in ad spots reminds me of AdBusters trying to get TV airtime for their Uncommercials because they're both having trouble getting non-traditional spots in ad slots and they both bring public awareness to their trouble.
One of the big reasons I'm against Flash is I don't know of a Free Software implementation of it. Another big reason I'm against Flash is the lack of accessibility—as far as I know there's no such thing as a Flash user stylesheet, so it's possible you could make a Flash animation I could not easily read (or see) which goes against the a major advantage of the rest of typical WWW pages.
When I put these two reasons together, it's enough for me to reject Flash altogether. Also, I don't find Flash to be a marker of high quality thoughtful presentation that is worth my time to download over my slow connection. I think the questioner needs to focus on writing prose (difficult to do, but very low bandwidth and it can survive the test of time far better than Flash ever will).
Much of what you say is spot-on, but this leaves me wondering what part of common sense says you shouldn't defend your copyright in a case where the license encourages sharing? What part of common sense says Robertson should be allowed to infringe the GNU GPL?
Actually, this is a golden opportunity to learn the difference between the freedom-minded free software movement and the freedom-dismissing open source movement. The GNU GPL is a copylefted free software license. The open source initiative did little more than place it in their list of approved licenses. Calling the GPL an open source license misrepresents the philosophy and authorship of the GPL. Defending software freedom is very much at the heart of this issue.
Fortunately the FSF handles many cases like this every year and the vast majority of them are amicably resolved long before anyone goes to court. The NuSphere MySQL case is the exception, not the rule.
Correct, and your post is not a troll regardless of what the moderators say.
Reading some of the other commentary on this issue, I think the go-along-to-get-along mentality is the GNU GPL's weakest link. There's little difference between a copyleft and non-copyleft free software license if the copyright holder is spineless.
That's preposterous. What you're saying is 'I know Robertson is violating the license he agreed to when he built his project, but we should let him continue to violate the license until he tells us he's comfortable.' (after all, he sets the deadline you're saying we should be waiting for).
If he wants to be able to do what he's doing, he should have chosen a non-copylefted free software project to base his work on. He didn't pick solely non-copylefted free software. He chose code covered by the GNU GPL, a copylefted free software license. Now he's in violation. The question is will the copyright holders whose license he's violating defend their license or not? This is why it is important to care about software freedom, kids. This is why copyleft is an important concept and developers need to pay attention to licensing.
How much of the antialiasing is due to OmniWeb's code and how much is due to functionality inherited from Quartz?
Because a large portion of European copyright law is based on it ("moral rights")—contrary to freedom-loving Americans, there are those that think the author has non-transferrable rights to the work that even go so far as to allow retraction of the work if it's not received according to the author's wishes. A previous /. story talked about this where some half-baked /. submitter agreed with Michael Fraase's article that America should adopt European artists rights, perhaps not realizing that doing so would grant an author the power to squelch parodies of their work. Moral rights, like "property" talk and "idea protection" (a growing body of law that will be the next battle for freedom-minded Americans) create the ability for copyright to limit the use and distribution of ideas (which copyright explicitly does not protect) instead of expressions.
What Fraase's conclusion doesn't acknowledge a full awareness of is that US copyright law evolved as a utilitarian bargain among authors, publishers, and the public, while European copyright evolved as a way to reward artists and authors for building culture. As Vaidhyanathan explains in his book far better than I can here, Mark Twain was integral to American copyright, he fought for perpetual copyright (see Twain's "The Great Republic's Peanut Stand") so his heirs and estate would be benefitted forever. He liked the control moral rights gave authors. He thought the public's claim on his works was unjustified and therefore undeserved. Unfortunately his influence exceeded his prescience and he didn't realize moral rights help threaten, not support, creativity. Modern corporations share Twain's motivation—greed—and they share the same conclusion as Twain—everlasting copyright power.
Instead of reading the all-too-short Fraase article, read Siva Vaidhyanathan's "Copyrights and Copywrongs" (ISBN: 0-8147-8806-8) for more on the exchange that built American copyright and why preserving the idea-expression dichotomy is so important for freedom and maintaining democracy.
Although I disagree with the use of the propaganda term "piracy", this summary from a footnote in the landmark Diamond Rio case, the case that opened the door for portable MP3 players, is otherwise agreeable:
To which I'd also add that even if one were to pay for the music CD, it's not clear that one would pay the publisher for it. There are venues to legally obtain the music CD without paying the publisher (public libraries and any second-hand sale) in which case multiple people can listen to the music as the music licensee but only result in one sale for the publisher. Your burger example doesn't help eludicate understanding of copyright at all. A burger cook working for someone else doesn't hold a copyright on the burgers.
Too simple; simplistic, really. I'm not sure what you mean by the "result" of your thoughts, but your thoughts are not copyrightable, copyright law in the US only protects certain expression of ideas. How much control you have over that expression is not anywhere near as simple as you have made it out to be (your burger scenario, for example, would not allow me to do as I wished with the burger; sometimes there are patents that can interfere with your ability to legally distribute a work copyrighted to you). You should find the book I recommended earlier (ISBN: 0-8147-8806-8). It will painlessly get you up to speed in understanding copyright. I found it a worthwhile read and I hope you do too.
Unauthorized duplication is not stealing, no matter how many people fail to recognize the difference between physical property and intangible concepts. Please don't refer to it as such. What johnnythan admitted to is illegal, but you'll lose any rational argument about copyright if you insist on talking about copyright infringement as theft of property. Siva Vaidhyanathan has written an excellent book called "Copyrights and Copywrongs" in which he explains the dangers of thinking about copyright as property law. I highly recommend it because it is easily read, concise, and very well researched.
I think you'll find a lot of people who use namecalling ("raving nut") aren't that familiar with RMS' insightfulness, the importance of software freedom, or the fine distinctions he applies which allow him (and us) to think more clearly.
I usually find such mud slinging to be an effect of online discussion—for whatever reason, some people feel free to unjustifiably speak ill of him online when they would not do so in real life in a face-to-face encounter with someone engaging in an otherwise polite conversation about software freedom.
I'm glad you chose to bring this up.
That's a very clueless essay, actually. The silly question the essayist poses doesn't address the copyleft issue at all. It doesn't even give the reader the impression the author is aware of software freedoms. Instead it looks like just another RMS-bashing screed (complete with tired namecalling). Fair use, picking another program to base one's changes on, the problem of conflating physical and conceptual works (resulting in thinking of copyrights and patents as "property"), and writing one's program from scratch are some of the overlooked issues in "Nick"'s tirade. You'd do well to avoid this reference.
What did you expect? What is ideal to you?
Because unlike so many other free software licenses, the GNU GPL is written by an organization well-versed in both programming and law, it now has genuine court time under its belt (with a judge that shows no indication of finding it to be an invalid license), and it has language to handle a number of cases that come up (including patented code, maintaining software freedoms for derivative works, distinguishing between linking and executing as a separate program).
More importantly, they should have selected a license they understood and agreed with. I cringed early on when Shawn Gordon indicated his ignorance:
There's the first problem. People who ignore software licensing can not run a software business effectively. Gordon should have taken the time to learn about licensing or he should have hired someone to train him on the details of licensing. Licensing is as important to your code as your code is to your business. If you ignore licensing, you will regret it. If you find out too late you don't agree with the license you chose, you might have already done something not in line with your business plan. This is nobody's fault but his.
Nobody is ever forced to use the GPL because nobody is forced to derive their program from a GPL'd work. It's important not to overlook that they could have written their code from scratch or based their work on something else.
It is not any kind of violation. You are encouraged to charge as much money as you can get for distributing free software. The "free" in free software refers to freedom, not price, and giving away your free software is wasting an opportunity to make money for development.
Gordon does appear rather unclear on the GPL. But, not paying attention "to all the licensing stuff" will do that to you.
Your point has been debunked already but I thought you'd want an authoritative essay on selling free software and a brief GPL FAQ reference to payment.
The freedoms of free software don't require you to be a programmer. You can take advantage of them by hiring someone to modify software for you (which is how some consultants make money) or learn a small bit of programming to do an easy job without becoming a well-versed in programming. We collectively leverage the benefits of software freedom when people inspect source code and engage in openly sharing bugs and security/privacy flaws.
The free software movement speaks to all computer users, not just programmers.
Also, not all free software is available for no money. I advocate that people should charge as much as they can for distributing free software. It's an opportunity to make some money to fund free software development that shouldn't be wasted.
Your namecalling deserves a troll moderation. But more importantly, you assume that because someone intends to make money from software they deserve to make money from software. The free market says that this assumption is not valid. Microsoft antitrust problems aside, a competitive marketplace determines how much money one makes selling software and software services. It is unreasonable to think you are owed money merely because you expect to be paid.
It's great that more people are talking about freedom and not at all unusual that most of these people are not programmers. After all, most people are not programmers.