Subject: Re: free software as a delivery vehicle for lisp From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2002 06:05:50 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3226716366054217@naggum.net> * David Golden | Cannot "take them back? - no, he cannot arbitarily decide to stop anyone | using the patch he released, but at the same time, he can certainly, as | the original copyright holder, use a new license for all subsequent | versions of the code comprising the patch. The kwyword is "published". Once published, some expression or idea is "out there" and cannot be taken back to be used as an "edge" elsewhere. If you are at all creative, you will see that you do things better than other people. If you intend to make a reasonable living, your uniqueness comes with a price tag higher than the competitors in the labor market who are not as creative. If you just give away your "edge", nobody has any reason to higher you at a better rate than your competitors or to hire you at all, because they can get a monkey to ask you questions and use your code, or look at all the patches you post and scavange them. Who is to tell whether something is a copyright infringement? Just doing something wrong is not enough -- somebody needs to discover it before they can get reparations. This is the hardest part of all of this. | Well,yes Thank you for at least acknowledging the point. | - but you wouldn't have the code at all if you hadn't agreed to the | license - think about it "I just got the source for SQL Server from | Microsoft, and now the big meanies won't let me change the license for my | tree and resell it" - sounds silly, doesn't it? Please note that I have not used _anything_ from Microsoft since the Altos computer I got with Xenix back in 1985. I have _never_ bought a license from Microsoft for any of their DOS-based crap. Saying X is good by pointing out how great it is relative to Microsoft's crap does exactly _nothing_ for me -- I am _already_ free of their evil control. For a long time, I have argued that the _only_ purpose of the Open Source and Free Software movement _today_ is to fight Microsoft, and that this is an against-fight, such that the whole movement would disperse into nothingness if they actually won. Regardless, I have found other ways to fight Microsoft than to give away my livelihood. So that is no longer the only solution. Productive thinking about the impact of free software has to return to a state of "unsolved problem", because I am no longer interested in any "better than pure evil" argument, and I think offering this argument over and over is deeply insulting to those who at least try to take you seriously and at least _try_ listen to your arguments. Microsoft is _completely_ irrelevant. They have no more power over you than you give them. Just do not give them any. | The GPL is NOT public domain. Since you have to tell people this, you cannot have paid much attention. Please do not restate the obvious -- it tells people that you think they are idiots who missed it or that you are. | You can still set up your own tree, but, without negotiating alternate | terms with the original copyright holder, it'll be GPL... Again, this is | usually thought to be a feature, rather than a bug. Would you _mind_ trying to think about the issue? We all know all the propaganda from the Free Software side. This is about when and how it is _not_ a feature. You strike me as one of those recent converts who gets tricked into walking the streets offering people "personality tests", which is great for the "cause" you work for, but what is at stake here is not whether someone believes it is "beneficial" in some absolute sense, but the _relative_ beneficialness of some political ideal to all alternatives. /// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.