Plan 9 license

[David Johnson]

On Sun, 03 Sep 2000, Mark Wells wrote:
> 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.

Another common definition is related to the first: to be in control of
one's own property. Property being defined as one's self, one's
actions and one's possessions. Or life, liberty and property, as
someone in the 18th century would have put it. Your freedom to swing
your fist ends where my nose begins, because that is also where my
freedom begins.

And I wholly reject, like you, the notion of "positive freedom".

> 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.

Another 18th century term for property was "pursuit of happiness". The
"right of property" is a dangerous concept, meaning that someone else
can be compelled to hand over their property to you, whereas the right
to pursue property  means that you can use voluntary means to acquire
property but cannot coerce it from anyone.

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

Not all violations of someone's property is theft. Consider trespass
for instance. Although you cannot steal information, the possibility
still exists that you can trespass on it. Whether or not trespass
should be considered a crime is another matter entirely. There are some
who firmly believe that land should not be owned and advocate against
trespass laws.

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

It's not a myth. Although there are several distinct kinds of IP, they
all have in common the notion that information can be property, so I
will lump them together briefly despite the protestations of RMS. They
meet one of the definitions of property already in that they have been
created through the labor of their authors, or homesteaded in other
words. But another definition of property is that it can be defended
and controlled through voluntary means. In terms of land ownership, it
can be defended and controlled in the absence of trespass laws through
the use of locks, fences and guards. Likewise, information can be
defended in the absence of IP laws through encryption, registration and
time limitations. Since information has been created by the author and
can be defended by the author, it counts as a form of property.

It is the transferal of intellectual property that causes the most
concern. It doesn't matter much to us if the author has ownership of
his or her software, instead we are more concerned with what what we
can do with our own copy of it. (I'm switching over to a specific
kind of IP now) This is where the DMCA and UCITA are nasty things,
whereas "classic" copyright wasn't. Under classic copyright, I have
lots of rights with regards to my copy of information. I can make as
many copies as I want for my own personal use. I can reverse engineer
it. I can lend or transfer my copy to another (though I have to ensure
that only one copy is in use at a time). And yes, there are specific
reforms that I would urge for even classic copyright.

But even if the copyright laws were repealed tomorrow, software
developers can still privately protect their works. These protections
can range from the mundane such as a contract, to the sophisticate like
time limited encrypted software requiring registration and a dongle.

What I find most interesting though is the relationship between Free
Software (as the FSF defines it) and property. By licensing Free
Software, ownership over it *is* asserted. If no one should have the
right to regulate how I distribute or modify their works, then why
don't I have the right to distribute a binary-only modification of
emacs? Or if copyright is the only thing holding back software from
being free, why isn't my public domain binary considered Free Software?

Getting back to freedom as I finish off this rant, tell me how I am
denying you life, liberty or property when you have voluntarily and of
sound mind purchased my proprietary and closed source software, knowing
full well in advance that you would not be able to modify and
redistribute it? How can I possibly be coercing you if the exchange was
completely open and voluntary?

-- 
David Johnson
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<http://www.usermode.org>