Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 22:47:07 -0400 (EDT) From: "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> To: adam@whizkidtech.net (G. Adam Stanislav) Cc: kuehl@lgk.de, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Richard Stallman came to town Message-ID: <199905130247.WAA11499@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> In-Reply-To: <19990512195044.B217@whizkidtech.net> from "G. Adam Stanislav" at "May 12, 99 07:50:44 pm"
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G. Adam Stanislav wrote, [snip] > He, too, got away with copyright, replacing it with copyleft: Anything a > programmer writes does not belong to its creator but to society at large. > Once a programmer releases code under GPL, he gives away all rights to it > for the ephemeric benefit of all. Even the original author is not permitted > to reuse his own code, except under GPL forever. Hmmm... I do not see how that can be true. The _original_ programmer, the orginial copyright holder, cannot use his own code anyway he would like? Sure, the copies of the code that are already out there are really 'out there' and cannot be retroactively un-GNUed, but I don't see how the original author is prevented from licensing a derivative work, or even an unmodified version, anyway he sees fit. > He has created an atmosphere in which it does not pay to be a programmer. > Whatever original ideas you might have, you cannot make a living off them. > As soon as you release a new and original program that took you years to > develop, and try to make it pay your bills, some kid will copycat it and > release under GPL (it is quite easy to write a program that does the same > thing as another program, the hard part is in coming up with the idea of > what a new program could do). So, why even bother coming up with new and > original ideas? Huh? What's to stop that same kid from writing a copycat program and distributing it as Shareware, under other Freeware licensing, or even putting it in public domain. Again, how does GNU directly affect this? Also, if it's easy to do, why can't another economically motivated party redevelop your idea? Isn't that what Microsoft Windows did to the Macintosh (after Apple took the idea from Xerox)? Last I checked, Windows is not GNU. > He has also created an atmosphere of fear: I would be afraid to look at any of > GNU source code out of fear that I might unconsciously and unwittingly use > some of it in my own code and relinquish any and all rights to the fruit > of my labor. Anyone in creative circles must have a certain fear of that. Does the musician live in fear that he's unconciously copying a song he heard as a child? Again, this issue is not unique to GNU. Actually this is not as much of a concern with software. An algorithm cannot be copywritten, it has to be patented. If you look at GNU to see how something works, then write your own implementation from scratch using the same method, that is not (necesarily) a copyright violation. > > And it would be quite reasonable to take into consideration > > that GNU tools played an important role for achieving a > > free BSD. > > It would also be quite reasonable to consider that few of the GNU tools > were original ideas conceived by GNU. Most of them simply take the creative > fruits of others and copycat them. Did GNU invent the C language, make, > fortran, assembly language, lisp, yacc and lex? Did they really help advance > technology? Did BSD invent all of these tools (well, maybe a few ;)? And again, copycatting of these tools could and does exist without GNU (afterall, what are FreeBSD tools but copycats or descendents of these same things). IMHO, GNU has a place in the world. I personally don't go to the extreme that _all_ software should be GNU, but I do think that the existence of GNU or a foundation actively trying to increase the pool of GNU software is not evil. It's just another choice for people who write programs. -- Crist J. Clark cjclark@home.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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