Plan 9 license

[Mark Wells]

On Sun, 3 Sep 2000, John Cowan wrote:

> 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.

It's fairly straightforward.

> > 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.

That's exactly my point.  Material objects have mutually exclusive uses.  
Therefore, it is possible for someone to violate my right to my property
by using it in a way that excludes the way I want to use it.  Theft is one
form of this; trespassing and vandalism are others.

> > 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

They're monopolistic with respect to a specific object.  They're not
monopolistic with respect to all objects of a certain type.  An oil
company might own many oil wells and a large amount of oil, but it can't
assert ownership over all oil everywhere.

> (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.

That's right.  I've restricted your ability to use your land.  It would be
very difficult for me to similarly restrict your ability to use your
software.

> > 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.

You _can_ sell it.  You just can't dictate how _I_ can sell it, which is a
different matter.