Re: GPL V3 and Linux

[Chase Venters <chase.venters@clientec.com>]

On Monday 23 January 2006 16:10, linux-os (Dick Johnson) wrote:
> The problem is that every rule and every law takes
> away rights. Laws do not give rights. Rules do not
> give rights. Amendments to existing laws sometimes
> prevent the restriction of rights (like the first 10
> amendments of the US Constitution), however there
> are no rules or laws that ever, anywhere, provided
> any rights whatsoever. Rules, regulations, and laws
> are all about restricting rights.
>
> Sometimes the restrictions are necessary. For instance,
> except in very special circumstances, governments usually
> take away the inherent rights to kill, etc.
>
> The initial writer was correct. The GPL was supposed
> to be all about freedom. Then, there are hundreds of
> words that have nothing to do with freedom. They
> establish rules. The crybaby says; "You will play
> by my rules or..." Rules restrict freedom.

There's nothing crybaby about it! Copyleft is, as Stallman puts it, to flip 
copyright on its head. If there was no such thing as copyright or other forms 
of laws / restrictions on sharing ideas and intangible implementations, there 
would be zero reason for the GPL because all the GPL aims to do is to 
preserve the freedom to share.

So in that sense the GPL is about *enforcing* freedom.

I must admit that I'm terribly confused - I thought all of this was well 
understood and accepted. Why must everyone attempt to spin the GPL into 
something it is not? The only way the terms of this license would be in any 
way restrictive on anyone is if they decided to *exploit* a given GPL work in 
order to *restrict* the rights of future users of the work. In that case, the 
GPL would intervene and say 'No'.

> Perhaps these rules are necessary. However, for 20
> years before the Internet even existed, people were
> sharing source-code without rules. This was the
> principle behind the PROGRAM EXCHANGE and other
> obsolete BBS systems. At that time the ground-
> work of most all the file-compression routines,
> file-transmission routines, file-types, flight-
> simulators, etc., the stuff now claimed by others,
> was freely given away. Some expected their names
> to remain in the source, but eventually their
> names were changed to "Microsoft" or GPL. For
> example, Phil Katz. He invented "zip" and gunzip
> and all that stuff. He's now dead. His lifetime
> of work has been stolen by others and claimed
> as their own.

The GPL isn't about anyone's "work" or "credit". The licenses that ARE 
concerned with "credit" are licenses like the original BSD license with its 
attribution clause - you must stamp your product and documentation with 
notices that say your stuff was done by the University of Berkeley.

> The Internet gets established and somebody who's
> claim-to-fame was the development of the world's
> most complicated word-processor, establishes some
> legalese and a lot of well intentioned persons
> fall into his trap as he claims that he developed
> GNU/Linux as well. Wake up.
>

Are you suggesting that Stallman claims he developed GNU/Linux? Perhaps I'm 
just really misunderstanding what you just said, but if you really did mean 
it that way, perhaps you ought to point out where. If you're referring to the 
fact that Stallman doesn't like people calling the combination of the kernel 
and GNU tools "Linux", then it's only crybaby if you refuse to believe his 
published intentions (that "we" care more about open source than free 
software, and he's only trying to make sure that "free software" isn't 
forgotten). That last part I don't agree with (I think plenty of kernel 
people care greatly about free software), but I don't think it's silly to 
call the full OS GNU/Linux either. 

In any case, I don't think Stallman is concerned about fame so much as he is 
concerned with his movement. If it were most other people, I'd say it's all 
about fame, but Stallman has at least in my eyes proven himself to 
consistently concern himself only with his philosophy.

I don't really blame Stallman for anything he's said that you might take as an 
attempt to take credit. I get the impression from seeing the interplay 
between "open source" and "free software", ESR and RMS, that ESR would be 
happy to write free software and Richard Stallman right out of history. And 
since I value "free software" just as much as I value "open source", I don't 
want to see that happen.

The bottom line of all my rambling here is that these licenses aren't about 
maintaining credit at all, which I think you were implying in your message. 
Sans these "You will play by my rules or..." clauses, there would be no huge 
open source community because the proprietary software vendors would vacuum 
up anything of value and use it as leverage to lock people in. (And as for 
your comment about BBSes and the days without licenses, a zillion dollar 
proprietary software business had not yet been invented).

If you want open source licenses with no restrictions at all, that's "public 
domain". And "public domain" won't ever be what it could be until you abolish 
copyright.

Cheers,
Chase