Copyright

[John Cowan]

Ken Brown scripsit:

> The inherent standard in court for copyright is ownership and control.  The
> GPL negates your individual permissions.  In addition, you revoke all rights
> to control distribution.  Sure you can say that there is a copyright, but to
> me its like claiming ownership of air. Read the copyright restrictions that
> lawyers right for copyrighted work.  They insist on 100% control of any and
> every alteration and permission on ALL distribution.  The GPL is the
> opposite.

Lawyers do what their clients want them to (within limits).  The FSF's lawyer
was asked to create a license with only certain restrictions, and so he did.

Each and every FSF work says "Copyright xxxx the Free Software Foundation".
Each and every month, someone decides to ignore that notice and reuse
FSF code in their proprietary application.  They hear from Eben Moglen,
and they end up ripping out the code or playing by the GPL rules.  Every
time.  Not one has tried to go to court yet.

*That* is ownership and control.

For details, see http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/lu-12.html
and http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/lu-13.html

-- 
John Cowan                              <jcowan at reutershealth.com>
http://www.reutershealth.com            http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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