On 2004-09-23 02:43:24 +0100 Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
And again, I don't believe "the freedom to prosecute with patent
accusations" is an important "freedom" to protect, any more than
"freedom to take my software proprietary". I think it's valid and
legitimate for a free license to restrict this "freedom".
I don't believe that the freedom to bear arms in urban areas is an
important freedom to protect, but it's not one that copyright law has
much to do with. My use of copyright law should leave it unchanged.
This is preservation of independent things. It's not protection, just
as it's not persecution.
That is more-or-less the line I'm arguing we take with patent law too.
I don't think it's right that it can apply to software anywhere, but
deliberately muddling copyrights and patents any more seems a basic
wrong move.
As you noted, there are implementation problems too. This seems
likely, as I have been told many times by experts and real lawyers
that patent law and copyright law are very different. Because I trust
their words, I'm suspicious of people who try to combine them. It
makes me uncomfortable: I've years of dealing with copyright, but much
less experience with patents, as they hardly touch me.
Finally, there seems little need to combine them, so what's the
incentive driving authors who do?
People taking your work, enhancing it, and distributing binaries
without
source, is not a copyright-based problem at all, but it's still dealt
with
via copyright.
It seems like a copyright-based problem to me, because that would be
the law People would be using to restrict the work in your situation.
In the absence of a copyright permission for it, can it be done
legally?
--
MJR/slef My Opinion Only and not of any group I know
Creative copyleft computing - http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
LinuxExpo.org.uk village 6+7 Oct http://www.affs.org.uk