Re: [Nolug] RMS vs Cisco (Round 1 *ding*ding*)

"Jeremy Sliwinski (mailing list account)" <listbox@unix-boy.com> writes:

> Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
>> You don't lose “control” or “rights” to software that you never had.
>
> It is so amazing to see the ways people will twist and contort in
> order to get the fruit of other people's work without actually doing
> the work themselves.

Twist and contort, eh?

You do realize that the GPL was created exactly because of the problems
you are talking about, don't you?

RMS didn't set out to take other people's work. He discovered that he
didn't actually have the control and rights he thought he had over some
software.

For a while, he fumed, just as you are, that his rights were being taken
away. Then he went out and created the GPL. And note that he didn't
take anyone's software(*) and slap the GPL on it. Instead he created
GCC, Emacs, and a plethora of other tools. He created software and used
his rights under the copyright law to control the distribution of that
software. You may not like the man, but you can't deny that he has
written an enormous amount of software.

Can you name one time when someone successfully used the GPL to claim
rights to software they did not control? When they used the GPL to, in
effect, steal another persons labor? And I mean a specific example, not
just “the GPL is evil!”

The GPL is no more evil than the copyright system as a whole. In fact,
you might not agree with me on this, but I would argue GPL subverts some
of what is currently wrong with our copyright system.

And you still haven't explained why you think I should not have the
right to license my own software under the GPL.

Perhaps it would help my understanding of your position if you could
answer this question: Is the software license that Apple uses for iTunes
more or less evil than the GPL?

Mark

(* — I have read some stories that say some of the display code for an
early version of GNU Emacs was lifted from another, proprietary, version
of Emacs. I have not compared the source code myself, so I don't know
if this is true or not. I doubt that they are.)
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Received on 12/14/08