Message 01580 [Homepage] [Navigation]
Thread: oxenT01543 Message: 48/50 L6 [In index]
[First in Thread] [Last in Thread] [Date Next] [Date Prev]
[Next in Thread] [Prev in Thread] [Next Thread] [Prev Thread]

Re: [ox-en] GPL Restrictive was - RedHat and Fedora and SuSE and Novell




On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Martin Hardie wrote:

MY growing view is that the attacks on FLOSS (starting with the SCO case
it appears )will come based upon the freedom of contrcat enshrined int
he emaning of liberty in the US Constitutionand he fact that the GPL is
"restrictive" and thus contrary to this liberty and anti competetive (a
la anti Trust law).

  How can exercising the freedom to contract be contrary to the freedom
to contract? This whole line of thinking sounds entirely like nonsense to
me.

  The GPL is a contract, and a reciprocal one at that (I give you this if
you give me that).  It is similar in many ways to other reciprocal
contracts, such as more well known royalty-bearing software contracts (I
give you this if you pay me that).

  The odd-ball licenses out there, if you really want to look at them
closely, are the NDA licenses (You give me this, you give me that, I give
you nothing) like the Shared Source licenses, or the non-Copyleft licenses
(I give you this, I give you that, you give me nothing) like the BSD
licenses.

  This is not to say that I don't believe that non-reciprocal licenses
like BSD and LGPL don't have their place as I believe they do.  There are
many times when releasing economic rights and retaining moral rights in
copyright make a lot of sense.  I also believe that pre-term-release
public domain (things that are released to the public domain before the
term expires) has a strong roll to play.

  I just think that all the anti-Copyleft stuff is out of place
considering that the vast majority of software that is distributed at all
is offered according to some reciprocal contractual arrangement.

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 Ottawa residents go to the polls on Monday, November 10, 2003
 Democracy is not for spectators - it is your right and duty as citizens
 to participate! http://weblog.flora.org/search.php3?topic_id=52

_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/



Thread: oxenT01543 Message: 48/50 L6 [In index]
Message 01580 [Homepage] [Navigation]