Get ready....

[Derek J. Balling]

At 11:29 PM 4/14/99 -0400, R. L. Kleeberger wrote:
>There is no reason anymore.  I was still unsure whether the GNU GPL was able
>to be legally modified into another license.  It seems it is legal,

According to the license it is not. According to the instructions at the
top, the license may be copied verbatim, but it may NOT be altered.

Since excerption can be defined in terms of alteration, you cannot even
excerpt 90% of it (with 9% being the part you don't want, and 1% being the
title) since that's an alteration of both omission and change.

>therefore I don't have much of a buttress accept a philosophical one.  And
>this list is ot for philosophical discussion.

Agreed, and we have to clearly define the direction we want to go. I think
that licenses should be able to be copied in whole or part, which the
current GPL explicitly forbid.

>> >But, which is the lesser crime.  To damage an sacrifice an individual's
>> >freedom for the benefit of the people at large?  Or to sacrifice the
>> >people's freedom in benefit of the individual?
>> You probably would also support random search and seizure of peoples'
>> homes, since it is better to sacrifice the individual's freedom for the
>> benefit of the people at large. 
>No, I do not.

Your argument would support that. Can you define what makes the cases
different? Philosophically they are identical as far as I can tell.

>> Allowing someone to use portions of a license does NOT deny people freedom.
>> It is simply not necessarily granting them privileges the same privileges
>> as others choose to. Let's remember that any alteration of a copyrighted
>> work is a PRIVILEGE, not a right. It is something which is granted by the
>> owner of the copyrighted work, NOT something which you inherently have by
>> being alive. Rights CANNOT be taken away, privileges can. I can say that
>> "no future versions of my software will be released under the GPL", and you
>> no longer have the privilege of copying the code.
>I disagree.  If you would like to further this thread in private, I would
>love to, but let's keep it off the list.

I think a discussion like this should be out in the open. If the listowner
wants to deem it off-topic, I'm sure that they'll say something (unless
you're the listowner *grin*)


D