[OT] What is Open Source? (was Re: ANN: Twisted 0.16.0...)

[Clark C . Evans]

On Thu, Apr 18, 2002 at 04:31:22PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
|     Clark> There is a difference between "trademark" and "copyright".
|     Clark> RMS firmly believes in trademarks;
...
|     Clark> as it does not hurt your ability to fork the code and
|     Clark> do-as-you-please.
| 
| Hmm.  This is a good point.  rms certainly displays an emotional
| attachment to some of the code (especially Emacs)[1], which I have
| confused with belief in a property-like right to control.  But what
| really is happening is that he uses his control over GNU and FSF
| resources (eg, for development and distribution), and moral suasion.
| He's not using control over the code itself.
| 
| So this is consistent with denial of property right in software.
| Rather, he's saying "don't hijack my _effort_ for purposes I don't
| like; isn't the software itself enough?"
| 
| Thank you, that helped.

Welcome (thanks for reading ;)

|     Clark> Not that you have to believe in RMS's vision
| 
| But I do believe in RMS's vision of a free-software-only world.

I don't.  I firmly believe that copyright and patent are 
fundamentally good ideas (trademark is the best of the three).
They are a contract between the public as a whole to a inventor/author.
It goes something like this, to encourage disclosure
of works which will benifit society at large, we will grant you
a few particular rights for a limited time.  It is a ballence.
Too many rights for too long, and the concept has the exact
opposite effect.   I like to picture it as a bell curve,

      [2]
       *               ^
     ** **             | SOCIETY
   **     ** [3]       | BETTER OFF
 **         **         |
 [1]          **       | SOCIETY
                ** [4] | WORSE OFF

[1] Life without copyright law... kinda hard, read
    up about how the distributors end up controlling
    ideas rather than the creators (1600's)

[2] Life with perfect copyright law, not too weak,
    not too strong.   Perhaps we hit this in the 1800's?

[3] Life with too much copyright law... kinda hard,
    creators find it hard beacuse they are always
    violating someone elses work or can't build upon
    the work of others.

[4] Life with _way_ too much copyright law... we are here!


So, RMS is right, [1] is better than [4].  But, I think [2]
is an ideal.  However, given that we are at [4], [2] does
indeed look rozy, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, over the last century, our government has
taken a good thing and turned the dial all the way up.
Just like Food is good... too much food and you get FAT.
Everything in moderation.

So, I don't find fault with the concept of copyright or
patent; what I do find fault is that the laws are currently
so out of ballence that they have lost all legitimacy.

| [2]  I just believe that GNU and the FSF are not primus inter pares
| any more, and that the concentration of ownership of free software in
| the FSF is no longer especially useful.

Ahh.  Here I agree with RMS; if you want to use GNU, you
really should be donating the code to the FSF.  Why?  It 
is not about arrogance.  GNU software has yet to be
seriously challenged and when it is only the copyright
holder can enforce challenges.  Currently there is much GPL
software out there that is not owned by anyone (just try 
and find the owner for some peices)  and as such, enforcing 
it will be damn near impossible.  I bet 90% of GPL holders 
don't even send in the correct forms to the copyright office.   
Without the filings, it is the claimant's responsibility 
to *prove* that they actually own the copyright... and this 
is _hard_.  The FSF plays a crutial role in making GPL enforcable
by handling all of this legal stuff.   It may not seem 
important yet... but the true test of GPL has yet to arrive.  

Clark

-- 
Clark C. Evans                   Axista, Inc.
http://www.axista.com            800.926.5525
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