Re: [Gnu-arch-users] GNU Arch wiki being moved

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Lord <address@hidden> writes:

    Thomas> Linus is a pretty influential guy who does a lot of
    Thomas> leading by example.  He picked a pretty dubious fight on
    Thomas> this issue

Please read the guy's statements on the matter.  It's easy to see that
he made a hasty instinctive reaction to draft GPLv3, but everything
else he says is about *not picking fights*.  Basically his position is
"show me how GPLv3 will *help* Linux, and *then* I'll think about
lobbying everybody to change the license, which has never been
anything other than == GPLv2, because GPLv2 is pretty much exactly the
license I've always wanted".

    Thomas> I'm not sure I see how any of that is "radical".

The "GPLed code is not part of DRM" language expresses an explicit
restriction on the *field of use* of the code.  I believe that the
FSF's claim that this is merely an implication of copyleft is
specious.  The *license* permits circumvention *where permitted by
law*; that's all it can do.  In precisely the same way that the
license permits you to use GNU cp to copy files, but only as permitted
by law.

Also note that the FSF should *encourage* use of free licenses for DRM
software, since that would make *permitted* circumvention as easy as
it could possibly be, while of course the FSF doesn't intend to
advocate and enable unlicensed copying by its opposition to DRM.

The explicit patent license is very broad, and effectively requires a
public license on any claim embodied in the GPLed code, including
permitting cloning of other existing products unrelated to the GPLed
code.

Of course these effects are long-time goals of FSF policy;
nevertheless, explicit implementation in the license language is a
radical change of practice.  Neither will have any useful effect in
discouraging patenting or use of DRM; they'll merely reduce the field
of use of GPLv3'ed software by business.  To the extent that the
software matters to practicing a patent claim or using DRM, it's
pretty likely that BSDers will produce permissively licensed clones of
the GPL'ed software---GPLv3 may not even increase business costs for
the bad guys!

Speaking of picking pretty dubious fights....

    Thomas> I can see how, if I were say, Sun, GPLv3 would make it
    Thomas> easier for me to liberate Java.

It might work for you, but then you're not Sun.  Read Goldman and
Gabriel's book "Innovation Happens Elsewhere"; they make it quite
clear that Sun's gated communities for Java, Jini and the like are
carefully thought-out strategy.  I would expect that Sun would be very
unhappy with any license that made it illegal to use Java or Jini in
DRM, or that would potentially impair the intellectual property of
other companies that they would like to have supporting Java.

They are quite upfront about several big mistakes that Sun made in its
open source efforts; the non-open-source nature of its infrastructure
products, however, is not considered one of them.


-- 
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.