Underfunding or why I am not interested

[Aaron Wolf]

I know that this is not the place to get into complex licensing debate, I
just want to add two simple points:

1. Chris, you seem to be essentially aligned with the Copyfree Initiative's
position, which is one that is covered in article I linked to. It is a
position that rejects proprietary restrictions along with copyleft
restrictions. Therefore, it is intellectually consistent and respectable.

2. In your article you state "The permissive licenses above have the
advantage in that they pass downstream the right of those who do further
development to fully own their work to the extent that society allows
(through copyright law and the like).  The copyleft licenses are different
in that they pass only limited rights to utilize downstream to further
developers."

That is misleading and partly inaccurate. Only a Copyfree license can fully
pass downstream all legal ownership. Other permissive licenses retain the
copyright of their work, even though they are permissive. Also, Copyleft
licenses pass have only two effective restrictions on the freedoms of
downstream derivatives: 1. They block the use of proprietary licenses
(which should be perfectly fine to someone who favors freedom, because you
don't want anything to be proprietary anyway, and if you think someone
should have the right to be proprietary you *must* also logically accept
the right to be copyleft). 2. They cause incompatibility issues in various
cases (this is an unfortunate side-effect and is a legitimate reason to
oppose Copyleft, although not everyone thinks it is a good enough reason).

At any rate: please be aware of the confusion here. If you care to be a
clear critic of copyleft, it is very important to clearly show that you are
in the Copyfree Initiative camp. That is fundamentally different from being
in the hypocritical right-to-be-proprietary camp which can only logically
oppose copyleft by acknowledging that the do not actually care about
freedom.

I am pretty sure you are in the Copyfree camp. Just please make that clear,
and less time will be wasted debating things you aren't saying. Your
position is a known one, so you don't need to explain it all.

Respectfully,
Aaron

--
Aaron Wolf
wolftune.com


On Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 10:48 PM, Chris Travers <chris.travers at gmail.com>wrote:

> For those who don't mind a few possibly controversial thoughts on this
> matter (including why I don't like the AGPL from a freedom perspective), I
> wrote a blog post about it some time ago.
>
>
> http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-distributist-view-on-software-freedom.html
>
> The TL;DR is that all freedom comes down to a right to produce goods and
> services with a general lack of encumbrance.  While my thoughts have
> clarified a little since I wrote this, it's still a fairly accurate review
> of my thoughts on the matter.
>
> --
> Best Wishes,
> Chris Travers
>
> Efficito:  Hosted Accounting and ERP.  Robust and Flexible.  No vendor
> lock-in.
> http://www.efficito.com/learn_more<http://www.efficito.com/learn_more.shtml>
>
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