🚀 go-pugleaf

gumby@cygnus.COM (David Vinayak Wallace) writes:
>I guess you don't think too highly of companies like Intel, NeXT,
>Motorola, IBM, Sun, DEC, and DG who ship free software as system
>utilities (some of them even as the standard compiler or debugger).
>Fortunately Apple is still refusing to share anything, so we can
>determine empirically which works better...

Hmm. Seems to me that Apple (or, rather, the individuals who have ported
Gnu tools to Apple hardware), has been more than willing to share their
changes. My impression was that the FSF was playing politics with the
changes and refusing to use the shared information. I strongly suspect
that, given the opportunity, the Apple-related patches for Gnu software
would be happily handed over to the FSF. After all, the patches are
distributed under the terms of the copyleft anyway...

>	   I must admit that I find FSF's philosophy to be essentially
>   flawed, in its opposition to property rights. [description of Labor
>   theory of value deleted]

>You presume all rights to property belong to the producer.
>Essentially, when I obtain a piece of software I am enjoined from
>using it in various ways by its creator, unless it's totally PD.
>However car producers have been repeatedly denied the ability to
>prevent customers from servicing cars themselves, or to require that
>customers go to particular service providers.  Why should software
>consumers be required to do what the car consumers can?

The car companies, of course, have given up this ability as part of
the process of selling the car. Rental car companies are perfectly
free to prohibit user servicing. Rights to property _do_ belong to
the producer until the producer gives up the rights (by explicit
waiver, by selling the product, by failing to protect the rights,
or several other legal means). Most software (including, although
probably not legally, GnuWare) is not sold, but it is rather licensed,
which allows the producer to control the use of the product. Your
argument above --- that obtaining a piece of software should waive
license restrictions --- would render the copyleft's license provisions
(the most important, since copyright law is nowhere near strong enough
to do what the copyleft attempts) void.

>							   As far as the
>   FSF are concerned, I don't have a problem with their own desire to
>   create shared software (so long as they don't try to strip property
>   rights from those who do not wish to share their own software)...

>They make no effort to do this.  You can use their code under their
>license conditions, or not at all.  What could be fairer, by your own
>definitions?

Because some of their license conditions have the effect of stripping
property rights of those who don't want to share. For instance, the
FSF asserts that any program linked with libg++ is covered by the
copyleft. Morally and legally speaking, this is almost certainly wrong:
libg++ continues to be covered by the copyleft, and must be distributed
with source, but the other code comprising the package remains the
author's property, and they can decide whether or not to offer source
code. Forcing a waiver of property rights, as the copyleft sometimes
tries to do, is about as ethically upright as if the car companies were
to say "any money you make from using our car (sales gained through
travel, salary from a job you drove to, etc) belongs to us. You choose
to drive the car...".

--John

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John L. Coolidge     Internet:coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP:uiucdcs!coolidge
Of course I don't speak for the U of I (or anyone else except myself)
Copyright 1990 John L. Coolidge. Copying allowed if (and only if) attributed.
You may redistribute this article if and only if your recipients may as well.