🚀 go-pugleaf

coolidge@casca.cs.uiuc.edu (John Coolidge) writes:

|                                                              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.

If obtaining a piece of software would waive license restrictions it would
render the copyleft (and in fact the whole FSF) unnecessary. The copyleft
is only a mechanism built on top of the copyright law to emulate the
situation as it would be if there was no copyright law.

|       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...".

I see no ethical problems with this as long as you do not hide the fact
that your are doing it. FSF shout their policy from the rooftops. Don't
like the car deal? Buy your cars elsewhere! Don't like the copyleft? Go
get software elsewhere! The problem is that you seem to WANT to buy the
cars in that particular car yard and they won't give it to you under the
particular terms that you want.
-- 
Happy hacking!        | Everything should be made as simple as possible ...
                      |    and no simpler
Major                 |                          - Albert Einstein
major@pta.oz.au       |