"Violation"

[Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.]

Agreed. The difficulty, however, is that when something is added to the
public domain (which is becoming more and more difficult), anyone can scoop
it back out. Copyleft attempts to foi this recursive conundrum, but it does
so in a manner not entirely appealing; that's why RMS has alientated so many
people, I think. IMHO, the very scope of copyright requires adjustment for
digital works.

Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.
www.cyberspaces.org
rod at cyberspaces.org


> -----Original Message-----
> From: mark at gamma.pair.com [mailto:mark at gamma.pair.com]On Behalf Of Mark
> Koek
> Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 12:35 PM
> To: David Johnson
> Cc: W. Yip; license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: "Violation"
>
>
> David Johnson wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, W. Yip wrote:
> >
> > > Conventional licenses are more restrictive, while OSS licenses
> > > are so permissive, even 'viral', that the license threatens the very
> > > foundations of the notion of copyright as property.
> >
> > I hope not! If no one owned emacs or gcc, then there would be no one to
> > enforce their GPL provisions. Whether or not something is "owned" by an
> > individual, a caretaker, a foundation or even a government agency, it
> > is still property. If one dislikes information as property, the only
> > honest way to go, in my opinion, is public domain.
>
> The GPL is dishonest, then?
>
> RMS dislikes the notion of information as property. Yet he used the
> provisions of the intellectual property system to create the GPL, to
> promote freedom.
>
> Personally, I like this kind of pragmatic approach. Change the system
> from within.
>
>
> Mark
>