Plan 9 license

[John Cowan]

On Sun, 3 Sep 2000, Angelo Schneider wrote:

> To copy without the authorization of the creator, denies the freedom
> of the creator.

This is incoherent on any known definition of "freedom".  If you are
going to use terms in nonstandard ways, you need to explain them,
not just appeal to them as Yang Worship Words (Star Trek reference).

> It is moral wrong to make unauthorized copies as it it s moral wrong
> to denie the physical freedom of one.

You're entitled to devise your own moral code, of course.

> Free Software is a nice idea, but not the solution. It simply 
> floddes the market with so much software that stealing is no longer
> a reasonable action of one who likes to use the software.

Solution to what?  Anyway, free software cannot be stolen except by
breaching the license.

> If you invent the one and only intergalactic starship drive, you
> will make your knowledge free. 
> 
> One will build that ship with that drive.

Why only "one"?  If you make the information publicly and freely
available, *many* can build ships with that drive.  This is called
"competition" and is generally thought to be a Good Thing for the
public, if not for would-be monopolists.

> You should better think about a world in which the inventor/creator
> or how ever you call him gets a fair revenue, instead about a world
> in which a "customer" gets a free(in beer) access to inventions.

So we do.  See http://www.opensource.org/for-suits.html .

> The point with most free software promotors is that they only see
> the US and their strange copyright law and patent law. 
> The rest of the world is very different.

Nonsense.  The U.S. has been changing its copyright laws since 1976
to come into *conformity* with the rest of the world, specifically
including the EU.

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan at ccil.org
"[O]n the whole I'd rather make love than shoot guns [...]"
	--Eric Raymond