Francis Hwang on Fri, 17 Oct 2003 10:49:02 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> Linux strikes back III |
IIRC, even when you make a free software project there still exists a copyright that has rights under traditional I.P. law. A free software license like the GPL or LGPL is simply an extension of those traditional exclusive rights granted to you by old-fashioned I.P. law. Think of it as a radically different sort of shrink-wrap license. Free software gets confused a lot with public domain, but they're not the same. If I'm a songwriter I can record a cover of a traditional folk song in the public domain, and sell it for my own gain, without having to worry one bit about what it does to my rights over the recording or my entire album. A programmer cannot include GPL'd code in the same way. When the FSF is intervening, it's only in cases where it owns the copyright for that GPL'd or LGPL'd code. How come it owns the copyright? Because the programmer gave it to them, figuring that all this legal stuff is really no fun and that in any case the GPL would be better at it than him. So this isn't the case of the FSF going vigilante on something it has no business being involved in. It is pursuing an action that you could consider to be at the core of its organizational mission. The only thing I agreed with in that Forbes article was the line about this showing the "dark side" of the free software movement. If I were on the wrong side of the fence I'd call it a dark side, too. Make no mistake: Richard Stallman is, depending on your point of view, a visionary, or a fanatic, or a revolutionary. He does not view code ownership as a matter to be negotiated; he thinks of it as ethically untenable in the same way that some people think that gays shouldn't marry, or that you shouldn't eat animals. Stallman's stature isn't due to his beliefs, which are probably more extreme than those of most free software programmers. It's because he was a pioneer who did much to build up the legal and technical foundations of the movement. He invented the concept and wrote its first license, the GPL. And he programmed both the 800-pound-Swiss-Army knife that is the GCC compiler, and the operating-system-that-thinks-its-a-text-editor Emacs, so even if you think he's too prone to get into internecine squabbles or that he should pipe down about calling it "GNU-Linux", he gets more geek points than you'll ever have. However, he didn't do much to get free software into the eyes of corporations. He makes a poor ambassador: He's irascible, eccentric, and by some accounts he sort of smells. Other ambassadors have stepped in in the last decade. One is Linus Torvalds himself: By most accounts the creator of Linux is an absent-minded, friendly programmer boy genius who's happy to avoid politics if doing so gives him more time to think about the next kernel. Another is Eric Raymond, the hacker who wrote "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". "Cathedral" is more of an economic text than an ideological one; it's more concerned with how free software is an efficient way to produce high-quality software than whether such a method might be morally superior to its alternatives. Raymond was the one who coined the term "open source", a term that's a little blander and less terrifying to the boardroom. (I've been involved in more than one intense discussion about this coinage, and heard more than one programmer lament the fact that "free" in English means both "with no cost" and "liberated", whereas the FSF usage of "free" more significantly corresponds with the second meaning. Ah, the linguistics of alternative intellectual property schemes.) But regardless of who makes for better P.R., the fact of the matter is that Stallman has control over much, much less code than Raymond. The FSF (and, by proxy, Stallman) owns the copyright over much of what's essential to Linux. (Which means that Stallman has an okay reason to ask everybody to call it "GNU-Linux"; but dammit, there are already too many syllables in my life as it is.) So today Raymond and Torvalds serve as the non-threatening face of free software, and execs who aren't paying attention think it's just a way to get cost-free software without having to actually deal with those odd programmers. Meanwhile the FSF flexes its legal muscles whenever it feels it has to. Mixed messages indeed ... Francis Hwang http://fhwang.net/ On Thursday, October 16, 2003, at 07:20 AM, Ian Dickson wrote: >> >> but to rerun an old story or a continuing one for me - this is what >> troubles me about the reliance of fsfer's in whatever there guise on >> rigid forms of law ... if the fsf thingy is possibly "anti - property" >> or "proprietary" why not make the blatant choice of styling your legal >> language or "protection mechanism" in a non contractual form. Even the >> allegedly most radical fsfer's still can't remove themselves from the >> shackles of rigid rule based notions of law. >> >> As I keep saying the "structure and organisation of os means you don't >> need to rely on them to represent you ... we can all sue them all (if >> we >> so desire) ... users and contributers alike ... >> > I am confused. > > Do you think that the FSF should simply let companies do what they like > with Open Source code? Including make money out of it? > > This would be the practical effect of moving to an "each person sue on > their own account" or "code supplied on non enforceable terms" basis. > (People as individuals cannot afford to sue, and it wouldn't stop the > FSF suing anyway for those individuals who opted into any such action). > > Of course if you want to write code and release it without any strings > attached, you can. > > If you think that Linux should be released on a such a basis, > personally > I think you'd see a lot of programmers stop contributing. > > Cheers > -- > ian dickson www.commkit.com > phone +44 (0) 1452 862637 fax +44 (0) 1452 862670 > PO Box 240, Gloucester, GL3 4YE, England > > "for building communities that work" > > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg > body > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net > > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net