🚀 go-pugleaf

Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Isaac would say:
>On Sun, 30 Jan 2000 20:07:54 -0800, Jeffrey B. Siegal <jbs@quiotix.com> wrote:
>>Isaac wrote:
>>> Exactly right.  Copyright law does give certain rights to people who own
>>> copies of software.  Some of these are rights that publishers of
>>> proprietary software don't want you to use.  But the concept of owning
>>> rather than possessing copies of software are certainly supported by
>>> law.
>>
>>You *can* own copies of software, the way you own a book, but you do not need
>>to own a copy to use or have a license to use a copy.  Most software license
>>agreements state that you do not own the software at all, it is simply made
>>available for your use.
>>
>Most software licenses claim that you don't even own copies of the
>software.  If they didn't claim this, they couldn't limit rights expressly 
>granted by law to owners of copies.

The fact that the legal mechanism being used is formally known as
"copyright" should be a telling factor.

Copyright is all about establishing what rights different persons have
to make copies of works.

It only seldom has anything at all to do with establishing ownership;
ownership is a factor that generally speaking establishes the implicit
right to do whatever the owner wants.

If you own something by virtue of authorship, you can do pretty much
whatever you like with it.  

That is sometimes mitigated by there being some arrangement where
someone else acquires some control.  For instance, if an author agrees
to sell a book through a particular publisher, there is normally some
arrangement whereby the publisher becomes the *exclusive* distributor,
often for some period of time.

The GPL does nothing to the "ownership" arrangement; while it *is* a
somewhat subversive "hack" of the legal system, it happens to use the
traditional arrangements of having owners as well as non-owners, and
distributing copying rights amongst them in some manner that one hopes
will be useful.

If I write code that I distribute under the GPL, the code, by virtue
of my authorship, *belongs to me.* 

The fact that the use of the GPL has the (arguably peculiar) result
that it distributes the code widely to people that do not wind up
owing me licensing fees does not diminish the fact that I, as author
of the code, will be treated by the legal system as the owner of the
code.

Note that in some cases it may be unfortunate to be the owner.  The
fellow in Norway that wrote DeCSS code may be a bit unhappy that, as
main author, MPAA and other "big entertainment industry" folk are
focusing on his involvement as author/owner.
-- 
If the odds  are a million to one  against something occuring, chances
are 50-50 it will.
cbbrowne@hex.net - - <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>