[License-discuss] For Public Comment: The Libre Source License

[Howard Chu]

Russell McOrmond wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Aug 21, 2019 at 12:38 PM Moritz Maxeiner <mm at ucw.sh> wrote:
> 
>     Why does my wish for derivative works of certain software to be available to
>     the public (and legitimate use of the law to achieve that) bother you so much?
>     Why your fixation on "compensation"?
> 
> 
> I am offended by any alleged legitimacy granted to the exclusive rights of software authors being allowed to regulate private activities.   As part of my public
> policy advocacy work I have always tried to convince policy makers (bureaucrats and politicians) to carve private activities out of copyright, and to ensure
> that contract law can never be abused to circumvent the limitations and exceptions to these exclusive rights.  In other words, I've spent decades trying to
> ensure the very clauses you wish to add to your "Open Source" license would be unenforceable.

Fwiw, most of the free software I released in the 1980s, before GPL existed, had the clause
"You are free to use this software but any modifications/corrections/bug fixes you make must
be sent back to me so they may be included in future updates."

I am offended by the notion that someone may benefit from code that I released for free, but
would deny anyone else the benefit of improvements they make (privately or not) to my code.

-- 
  -- Howard Chu
  CTO, Symas Corp.           http://www.symas.com
  Director, Highland Sun     http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
  Chief Architect, OpenLDAP  http://www.openldap.org/project/