A response to my recent email says (I am not stating the person's name since the response wasn't copied to the OKFN list)
> Control isn't freedom. Copyleft protects the latter against the > former. Would-be millionaires deserve no special privilege in this. > That said, copyleft ensures that they suffer no special disadvantage > as well. > > > I simply don't understand this antagonism toward those who seek to make wealth. "Would-be millionaires" are not despicable, but in my view, are admirable. I am not one of them, and I don't have the qualities that would make me one of them, but I do admire them. Last week I met a guy who graduated from my alma mater, had a great idea, founded a company, worked 100s of hours a week, built it up, sold it for $135 million to another company, and is about to resign from this new company so he can work on new ideas and start new companies. He also gave back a huge endowment to his (and my) alma mater to fund a professor chair in operations research. That professorship will, hopefully, train countless new young students, one or two of whom might do what this guy did. This guy is 5 years younger than me, and has touched waaaaay more lives with his entrepreneurship and intellectual property than I ever will. Entrepreneurs create wealth, and a lot of folks share in that wealth. I don't have the streak of entrepreneurship in me, but I do have the passion to create the conditions in which entrepreneurship can flourish. I believe public domain data does just that. It levels the playing field so anyone who can, can become an entrepreneur. In the context of this conversation, control and freedom are not antithetical. And, if they were, well, then, forcing others to ShareAlike would be no different than any other kind of control. Oh well. I guess ShareAlike believers and Public Domain believers shall never meet. > >> On Oct 14, 2009 4:11 PM, "Mr. Puneet Kishor" <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >> On Oct 14, 2009, at 9:44 AM, Rufus Pollock wrote: > 2009/10/14 Jo >> Walsh <[email protected]>: >> dear all... >> >> Which is precisely why I believe all the ShareAlike licenses are >> misdirected. Business folks and entrepreneurs don't want to lose >> control over their IP, and so, are wary of ShareAlike in both >> software >> and data, but especially in data. By forcing the adopter to "my way," >> I restrict interoperability. >> >> I just returned from a 3-day global conference on entrepreneurship >> and >> innovation. I was handing out my "Creative Commons" business cards, >> and guess what -- none of them had heard of it. I tend to forget that >> the world doesn't really know about these alternative rights >> movements, and although it is happy to learn about it, it is a big >> world out there. They will be willing to adopt alternative schemes >> for >> licensing provided they don't perceive them as a threat to their >> control and freedom. >> > >> There is a spectrum, not a line, between non-profit and for- >> profit >> activity. There are pl... >> >> -- >> Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org >> Carbon Model http://carbonmodel.org >> Charter Member, Open Source Geospatial Foundation http:// >> www.osgeo.org >> Science Commons Fellow, http://sciencecommons.org/about/whoweare/kishor >> Nelson Institute, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu >> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Assertions are politics; backing up assertions with evidence is >> science >> = >> = >> ===================================================================== >> _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss >> mailing list [email protected].... >> > _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
