🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan2.220350.10661@nntp.hut.fi> sakaria@vipunen.hut.fi (Sakari Aaltonen) writes:
>Not being a native speaker of English, I'm not aware of the multitude of
>meanings the word 'free' may possess. However, when 'free' refers to a
>_ware_, the obvious meaning - obvious to me, that is - is 'no-cost'.
>Free hardware (or free kitchenware) is something you don't have to pay for; 
>similarly for free software. 
>
    There are more than enough meanings to the English word "free" to 
confuse any non-native speaker. And to confuse many native English
speakers too.
    In this discussion we have lost the main idea of the whole business.
The copyright laws, especially the laws in the United States, are a
restriction of the freedom of the press. In the case of computer
software the restrictions have increased lately. The idea of copyleft is
an attempt to reverse this trend. The source to a computer program 
cannot be placed in the public domain for the benefit of humanity. Anyone
may take the source, change it and then copyright it in his own name
for his own benefit. In order to publish source code for everyone to 
use freely, it has to be published with a lot of legal restrictions. If
the law said that the derivative works of writing placed in the public
domain were also in the public domain, then we would not need anything
like a copyleft. But the law does not say that. If you want your code
and everything dervived from using it to be available without 
restriction everywhere and forever, then you have a real problem.
Copylefting is one attempt to do it. It is not the perfect answer.
If the copyright law made better provisions for people who wanted their
work to be in the public domain or to be truly free, we would have a 
better solution. 
     I wish the courts would find out what algorithms are and not
let them be copyrighted and patented.
-- 
   Michael Coughlin             mikc@gnu.ai.mit.edu