Plan 9 license

[Mark Wells]

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".  
> freedom means to be free to do and to let do what you want.
> I do not know of any other definition.

There _are_ other definitions, such as those (common in some political
circles) that distinguish between "Negative Freedom" (the kind you
describe) and "Positive Freedom" (a nebulous concept involving some level
of guaranteed wealth and happiness at the expense of everyone
else).  They're wrong, but they are definitions.

In this case, the Positive Freedom principle would probably say that
creators have a right to be compensated (to some unspecified degree) for
their creative effort, and therefore that they should be guaranteed a
monopoly on distribution of copies.  Otherwise, they're being "enslaved".  
Positive Freedom defines slavery not as _forced_ work but as
_uncompensated_ work.

Again, they're wrong.  I'm not endorsing this definition; I'm just saying
that it is a definition we can expect to run into among academics and
other professional ignorers of reality, and we should be prepared to
answer it.

> > Anyway, free software cannot be stolen except by
> > breaching the license.
> > 
> 
> I'm not talking about "stealing" free software.
> I'm talking about stealing any intellectual property from
> an inventor/autor/creator against his will AND without
> refunding.

Here's a simple test to determine if something has been stolen: does the
original owner still have it?

The "intellectual property" myth was invented for the convenience of a few
people who thought "enforced monopoly" sounded too blunt.

The purpose of property rights is to settle disputes among parties who
want to use an object in different and mutually exclusive ways.  For
intellectual constructs there is no mutual exclusion.  If you write a
network driver, and I make a copy and modify it to handle a different
protocol, you don't have to use my version.  You're still entirely free to
do what you want with the driver as you wrote it.

As obvious as this seems, some people refuse to believe it because they
have a vested interest in perpetuating the false analogy to property.  
Considering what these emperors have spent on their new clothes, they'd
rather die of hypothermia than admit that they're naked.

> > to come into *conformity* with the rest of the world, specifically
> > including the EU.
> 
> In the EU it is impossible to transfer a copyright.

I'm not familiar with EU copyright law, but can't the same thing be
accomplished with contracts?  "I agree to allow Company X, and no one
else, to distribute copies of my software; in return, Company X will pay
me <amount>.  This agreement remains in force until the copyright
expires."