tony at searhc.org
Tue Feb 19 18:13:57 CST 2002
On Tue, 2002-02-19 at 18:57, Brett Glass wrote:
> "Copyleft," by its very definition, is intended to destroy the
> benefits of copyright to authors. There is no "kind" of copyleft
> that is ethical, because it is not ethical to confiscate authors'
> work nor to discriminate against them in licensing.
Uhm... how does the copyleft confiscate authors' work? How does it
discriminate in licensing?
Copyright gives certain rights to the *author* of a work. The author
gets to choose how the work is to be used, within certain bounds.
"Copyleft" is nothing more than a term applied to a certain application
That application of copyright is *still* within the rights of the
original author. Now, I understand your beef with some of the terms of
the *GPL licenses. I don't agree with you; but you are being rational
(except for your vilification of RMS and the FSF-- with that, you sound
a bit too strident).
This isn't even rational. If you agree that copyright is a good thing
(and it *sounds* like you do), then you agree that the author of a work
has *every right* to determine how that work is used. In that case,
no-one is confiscating anything, nor is there any discrimination. After
all, the exact same terms apply to everyone uniformly.
You've explained these points over and over again. I've heard your
arguments. But if you agree the author of a work has jurisdiction over
that work, than I cannot see how you can deny an author the right to
maintain control over their work.
That is all the GPL does: it ensures that an author will not lose
complete control over their work, by ensuring derivitives of their work
will remain open, as well.
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