Plan 9 license

[John Cowan]

On Sun, 3 Sep 2000, Mark Wells wrote:

> 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".  

I think that both you and your putative intellectual opponents need
a better schema.  Check out the classical Hohfeld schema at
http://law.gsu.edu/wedmundson/Syllabi/Hohfeld.htm and come back when
you believe you understand it.

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

That won't do: it works only for material objects.
In particular, IP rights are the rights to exploit something commercially.

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

IP rights are monopolistic, but so are ordinary property rights: if
I own land, I have the exclusive right to make what use of it I like
(subject to a few restrictions).  If you build a shack on the corner
of my farm, you have not "stolen my land", but my property rights
are invaded nonetheless.

> 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.

Except sell it (and its variants) where and how I choose.

> 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."

Yes, that works fine.

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