[License-discuss] Copyright on APIs

[Russell McOrmond]

On Sun, Jul 7, 2019 at 7:41 PM Bruce Perens via License-discuss <
license-discuss at lists.opensource.org> wrote:

> My opinion has been that gift-style licensing makes you an unpaid, and
> unappreciated, employee of big companies.
>

We are talking about two entirely different things.  This is not about the
1990's debate about reciprocal vs non-reciprocal licenses, and I side
strongly on the side of reciprocal licenses.

It is the expansion of copyright, patent and related exclusive rights for
the benefit of non-creator entities (including corporations) that are what
makes creators unappreciated employees and dependants of big companies.

It will never be the case that the expansion of exclusive rights to
interfaces (human or computer), or the regulation of the private activities
of citizens (private modification of software, private copying,
copying/communication within devices/home, etc), can possibly help
programmers in their plight to not be controlled by big companies.

The ends do not justify the means when the means will obviously have the
opposite effect as the alleged end.


I look forward to the day when more people within the software freedom
movement recognise the legal theories behind the Affero license to be as
harmful to our movement as legal protection for technological measures
(DMCA anti-circumvention/etc).

-- 
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>

Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property rights
as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! http://l.c11.ca/ict/

"The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware
manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable
media player from my cold dead hands!" http://c11.ca/own
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