🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <RJBL617w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (Industrial Poet) writes:
>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.

This is a very important point, and, although I don't want to belabor it,
it is at the very core of the PD/copyleft debate.

If you want to produce software that will remain free-of-encumbrance,
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you must do something to it (like the copyleft). 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.

From this point of view, then, PD software is not free-of-encumbrance,
since it can be encumbered at any time by anyone. Copylefted (or
equivalent) software is minimally encumbered so that it can remain
free-of-encumbrance.  

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.

Likewise, although a good point was made about free-of-cost actually
meaning free-of-licensing-charge, I'll also stick with the former.

You can use whatever you like, but please make this distinction! :-)

kurt
-- 
Kurt Baudendistel ---                                           --- GRA
Georgia Tech, School of Electrical Engineering, Atlanta, GA  30332-0250
internet: baud@eedsp.gatech.edu              uucp: gatech!gt-eedsp!baud