From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Jul 5 9:53:26 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from softweyr.com (softweyr.com [208.247.99.111]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EE50037B405 for ; Thu, 5 Jul 2001 09:53:22 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from localhost.softweyr.com ([127.0.0.1] helo=softweyr.com ident=2c7ad6fcdfac200e4dcb5bf404e4b5ca) by softweyr.com with esmtp (Exim 3.16 #1) id 15ICQv-0000qG-00; Thu, 05 Jul 2001 10:56:53 -0600 Message-ID: <3B449C54.EC88E204@softweyr.com> Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 10:56:52 -0600 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.12 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: j mckitrick Cc: Dirk Myers , freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSD, .Net comments - any reponse to this reasoning? References: <20010630174743.A85268@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010630173455.T344@teleport.com> <20010701032900.A93049@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010701132353.W344@teleport.com> <20010702152649.A18127@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG j mckitrick wrote: > > | There's *no* license that can trump the rights of the copyright > | holder. There's *no* license that can allow someone who doesn't own > | the copyright to close off the code. But licenses which meet the > | Open Source definition (let alone the Free Software definition) don't > | allow the copyright holder to revoke the permissions in the license. > > So what you are saying, then, is that 'Free Software' in the FSF definition > is not just GPL'ed, but also has the copyright signed over to the FSF so > they can 'insure' that the code will remain forever GPL'ed? If so, that is > damn scary. No, that's exactly how license and copyright law work. If you write a book and then sign a contract with a publisher allowing them to make unlimited copies of your book, you cannot later decide you don't want them to publish it anymore and revoke that license, unless they agree. (You would be a fool to sign such a contract.) This is exactly what the GPL *and* the BSD license are, an unlimited license to copy your work. This doesn't infer any rights for others to copy any other works by you, including later revisions, but you can't go back and change the license terms on the version you sent out. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message