[POLITICS] Re: When is the Last Time You Booted to Windows?

[Joel Rees]

On 2006.2.21, at 04:50 AM, Mike McCarty wrote:

> Joel Rees wrote:
>> On 2006/02/18, at 14:01, Les Mikesell wrote:
>
>>> You don't make something free by adding restrictions.
>> It's the oldest, most trite and over-used example in the philosophy,  
>> but how do you keep a kite in the air? If you let go of the string,  
>> how long does it fly?
>
> I've released some software which I wanted people to be free
> to use as they wished. I put them into the public domain.

I have too. I don't know if anybody uses it. I suppose that they don't 
because I've never heard from anyone who has. But if anyone has used 
it, they have no real incentive to let me know, or to offer bug fixes, 
or to offer me money to make it better, or whatever. Even a BSD class 
license would provide more incentive, legal and moral.

> THAT
> is freedom.

A rock floating in space is free, too, I suppose. No, not really.

> [snip]
>
>> of geeks. The target market is _still_ people who are willing  to 
>> trade a little work for a lot of freedom from (you know this)  
>> restrictive EULAs and the various kinds of malware that world breeds  
>> like, well, mold in the fridge (or virii in overworked sinuses in  
>> spring).
>
> GPL is an extremely restrictive EULA itself.

Funny you should say it is an End User License Agreement, the 
restrictions being on distribution, not on use.

>>> You don't increase sharing by restricting how
>>> sharing can be done.
>> No one is restricting anything. This is the license that incubated  
>> Linux. Nothing has changed.
>
> Eh? GPL restricts redistribution.

Until it was published, there was no first distribution, much less 
re-distribution. Without a license or an assignment to the public 
domain, there is no redistribution. It is the GPL license which grants 
the right to re-distribute under specific conditions. These 
restrictions seem to some to be more restrictive that the BSD class 
licenses, but the license is the choice of the author.

All you are doing in asserting that the GPL takes freedom away is 
complaining that the author failed to choose the license you think he 
or she should have chosen.

> [snip]
>
>> Actually, all the argument we are going through here now is  
>> irrelevant. The way of the future is for supply side and demand side  
>> to treat each other as equals. It will happen, no matter how much  
>> anyone fights it now.
>
> This seems to me to be an argument based on the idea of
> exploiting and exploited classes.

???

>  It seems to presuppose
> that when an exchange is made, then one side benefits,
> and the other loses.

In much of the world's markets, that is precisely what happens.

Money is not the only coin. Nothing is ever given away for free, even 
things assigned to the PD. There is a difference between exchanging 
value and exchanging obligations, and establishing a price is _not_ 
imposing obligation.

Failure to establish a price, on the other hand, does leave one wide 
open to exploitation.