SFLC will love the 7th Circuit

[Philippe Verdy]

Alexander Terekhov [mailto:alexander.terekhov at gmail.com] wrote:
> Nothing personal Chris, but consider:
> 
> http://www.marxist.com/computer-industry-capitalism-free-
> software240907.htm
> 
> "The advantage of the GPL licence is that instead of copyright, it
> imposes a strong copyleft on the software licensed under it."

The GPL does not impose it. The GPL is CHOSEN by authors that want their
creation to be distributed under copyleft (which is controlled by the public
community) rather than having to control themselves the copyright.

If Authors want that, the GPL is there to have their desire respected. In
fact, to enforce the rule, it also applies a copyright to the software, so
that authors are identifiable, and their desire verifiable. So abusing the
GPL terms that require the source is also acting against Authors rights
protected by their copyright.

Authors still have all their exclusive rights, they just grant a licence on
non exclusive rights that can safely be granted to anyone, without
limitation, in exchange of some reciprocity conditions (and the most
important condition is unconditional access to the source used by any
downstream distributor or conveyor).

Copyleft is not against copyright. It's a strong copyright, except that most
(not all) rights are granted to anyone without limitation.