[OT} How to un-GPL parts of a GPL'd module.

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

|[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]
|> Moreover, I do know that "IP" is different than physical object in
|> respect to cost of reproduction.  And that actual difference ought to be
|> recognized and embraced in law rather than having the distinction denied
|> and obfuscated in ideology and law.

"Mark McEahern" <marklists at mceahern.com> wrote:
|...I wasn't even thinking about the cost of reproduction...In the case
|of the stolen watch, it's clear and obvious that harm has been done.
|...All I'm really saying is that the same cannot be said for
|intellectual property.  It's not on the face of it obvious that any
|significant, lasting, relevant harm is done in violating the wishes of
|the creator regarding how the work is to be used.

Yeah, but what you're really talking about is cost of reproduction, even
if you don't realize it immediately.  It's always *things* that we are
interested in utilizing for various purposes--even if those things have
the fairly ethereal form of charges on a platter.

Some things are almost identical in the labor requirement for initial
production and subsequent reproduction.  Other things require far more
labor to create initially than they do to copy subsequently.  For
example, here are a few in order:

  - Growing one bushel of corn versus a later one
  - Building one watch versus a "knockoff" on the same design
  - Writing a book versus copying it with pen-and-paper
  - Writing a book versus copying it with a photocopier
  - Writing a floppy worth of source code versus disk copy

Classical economists of the Smith and Ricardo stripe (and Locke too,
especially) have had a way of thinking that demanded an underlying
uniformity that wasn't present in the things themselves.  So the concept
of "intellectual property" was invented to "fill the gap" between
production and reproduction costs.  Of course, even there, it's dopey...
using a tool also improves my ability to produce things; but I don't pay
a royalty to my hammer manufacturer each time I drive a nail.

The reason that the source code writer is not harmed by my "taking" his
code is that I don't really take it, normally.  If copying a floppy (or
an internet file) was more like hand copying a book, I might be more
inclined to steal her physical floppy disk.  But since disk copy is so
cheap, I don't bother.  Likewise, if building a new watch using an
existing one as template was not still so difficult, I would be little
inclined to steal the one in the jewelers window (well, I'm still not so
inclined personally... but in the hypothetical).

Yours, Lulu...

--
Keeping medicines from the bloodstreams of the sick; food from the bellies of
the hungry; books from the hands of the uneducated; technology from the
underdeveloped; and putting advocates of freedom in prisons.  Intellectual
property is to the 21st century what the slave trade was to the 16th.