🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1i7jkcINNbkf@life.ai.mit.edu> 
mikc@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Mike Coughlin) writes:

>In article <1993Jan2.220350.10661@nntp.hut.fi> 
>sakaria@vipunen.hut.fi (Sakari Aaltonen) writes:

SA:
>>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. 

MC:
>    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.

This is hardly an excuse to confuse them any further.

MC:
>    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. 

This is a very nice exposition of the party line.  There is but one
gap left: what is wrong with the way Donald Knuth protects his TeX
software?  The only obligation he imposes on the recipient, is to copy
everything verbatim, and this can be easily worked around by confining
changes to an external file.  Most importantly, unlike the FSF, Knuth
does not proclaim himself the owner of any derivative work.

Look, Michael, you are a very nice, earnest boy, but it is quite
futile for Stallman to send his lieutenants to do a man's job of
arguing.  You guys are just not up to snuff.

MC:
>     I wish the courts would find out what algorithms are and not
>let them be copyrighted and patented.

Agreed, and likewise for the "look and feel" protection.

>-- 
>   Michael Coughlin             mikc@gnu.ai.mit.edu  

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."