🚀 go-pugleaf

baud@kepler.eedsp.gatech.edu (Kurt Baudendistel) writes:
> In article <RJBL617w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (Industrial Poet) 
> >The GPL, GLPL and copyleft are themselves legal encumberances,
> >stating what the user may and may not do with the software.
> >
> >Software that is ``free of encumbrances'' is Public Domain software.
[...]
>                                                  PD software can be
> taken and used in any way that someone wants, including locking it up
> in a proprietary package and reselling it without source code.

Yes.  That's the price of giving people freedom; they might not do what you
want with it.

> From this point of view, then, PD software is not free-of-encumbrance,
> since it can be encumbered at any time by anyone.

Yes, but then it is not PD software.  When the software is PD, it is free of
encumbrance.  It can be made into something encumbered, but not without
removing it from the public domain.  (Distributing PD software without source
doesn't encumber it, since the user can get the source elsewhere; and
distributing a derivative work based on PD software does not encumber the
original software.)

So PD software is free of encumbrance; it's also freely redistributable.  It
may or may not be free of cost.

>                                                     Copylefted (or
> equivalent) software is minimally encumbered so that it can remain
> free-of-encumbrance.  

Almost; it's actually minimally encumbered so that it AND all derivative
works made from it will remain freely redistributable.

> The term ``minimally-encumbered'' might be better, but this drops use of
> the word ``free'', so I'll stick with free-of-encumbrance and make sure
> to tell people that this actually means minimally-encumbered.

The word "free" in the "free software" distributed by the FSF refers to the
fact that you are free to pass on copies of the software to anyone else. It
does NOT mean the software is free of "encumbrance", "price" or anything
else.


mathew