Felipe Contreras wrote at 06:26 (PDT) on Wednesday: > It doesn't matter how the GPL was designed, the GPL doesn't have > precedence over the law, and the law doesn't allow a software license > to change the nature of copyright law.
The GPL *doesn't* change the nature of copyright law. It uses copyright law to uphold principles. Most Free Software developers I know don't accept copyright law, as applied to software, as necessarily the absolute best moral policy for software just because "it exists". In fact, I, like most copyleft advocates, find that copyright law, as it's usually applied to software, actually harms users and developers. I also don't believe we should accept a system as morally correct merely because it exists. Copyleft uses copyright law to implement a different moral policy: that's the famous hack of copyleft itself. > And I believe differently, and so do a lot of people, which is why we > have the law that we have. There are many historians and researchers who believe we have the copyright law we have mainly because the law has not properly adapted from the age of the printing press to the digital age. Indeed, in many ways it's akin to other types of laws that seemed to make sense at the time they were first created, but today aren't so much. > I believe I've said to you all I can say, but it still looks like you > think the desires of certain people have precedence over the law, I never said any such thing. You've obviously misunderstood something I said if you believe I'm saying that. > [you think] that the _intent_ of the GPL is what matters, where in > fact, what matters is what the law allows You're conflating issues. The intent of the GPL *does* matter in explaining why some copyright holders disagree with you and chose to enforce the GPL to maximum level that copyright law allows. > Therefore, users have no rights, they have privileges, and developers > that don't enforce the GPLv2, are not eroding the rights. I'd say it this way: "Users should have an inalienable right to copy, modify, and redistribute software. Sadly, no law gives users these rights by default, but fortunately, some enlightened copyright holders chose to use a copyleft license which uses the legal infrastructure that exists (copyright law) to de-facto create those rights for users. Those copyright holders furthermore often chose to enforce their copyrights so as to ensure those users have the rights that the law doesn't otherwise give them". > That is the case *right now*, What I said is the case right now too. Note that *both* your statement and mine mix fact and opinion together, and therefore ... > I wish you could agree on that. ... neither of us will likely agree with the other. For my part, I don't wish you would agree with me. I wish you'd accept that copyright holders who enforce GPL are acting within their legal rights to enforce the license, even if you don't like that they do. You talk a lot about developer's legal rights under copyright law, but you are also very critical of those who chose to use those legal rights to the maximum with the goal of helping out their users. But, as I've been saying, I think this thread is now *waaay* off topic for the BusyBox list. -- -- bkuhn _______________________________________________ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
