Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: Copyright vs. Copyleft

[Chris Croughton]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 03:08:38PM +0000, Lee Braiden wrote:

> Alex Hudson wrote:
> 
> >Your point is that copylefted free software is preferable to 
> >not-copylefted, because there is an extra guarantee that the freedom 
> >is protected. It doesn't really affect the freeness of the software, 
> >and some free software users (BSD-licence advocates, for example) 
> >would argue that it's unnecessary.
> 
> No, my point is that free software is "free as in freedom", and that, if 
> the freedom to obtain the sourcecode and alter a binary is lost, it is 
> no longer free software, in the sense I'm used to.  Open source, maybe.

Take Zlib for example.  That software is licensed saying (paraphrased):

  Keep the authors' names on it, don't pretend you wrote it when you
  didn't.

  If you change it, say so and don't pretend that we put in the bugs
  that you added.

  Keep this notice in the code.

If you get a copy of Zlib, that is free, you can run it, study it,
change it, rebuild it and distribute it as you like.  MS can also do
those things, but they don't (because it's not copylefted) have to give
you or anyone else their changes.  /Their version/ is not free software,
but that does not affect in any way the version you have, that is still
free software.

> But yes, you seem to be getting that, from how you refer to BSD.  Can 
> you fill me in on why they argue that such guarantees of freedom are 
> unnecessary?  I thought BSD-types liked their license too, but just 
> didn't like the extra restrictions of copyleft.

That's about it, yes.  They are content with the freedom to do as they
want with the code, and don't want to limit the freedom of others to do
what they want with it.  My freedom to use code from FreeBSD (or Zlib)
is not at all affected by the freedom of MS to bugger it up and use a
broken version of the code.

The same would be true if there were no copyrights at all.  MS could use
their version as much as they liked, and keep it secret if they wanted
to do so, and it wouldn't affect the original code at all, that would
still be just as free.  They could yell "you copied it from us", and all
they would get is the joy of yelling (just as academics have fun
accusing each other of plagiarism but it is "sound and fury signifying
nothing" to the rest of the world).

Chris C