From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-03-15T12:00:34+09:00
Subject: Re: GUI With Ruby

On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 09:10:00AM +0900, Eleanor McHugh wrote:
> On 14 Mar 2007, at 21:44, Chad Perrin wrote:
> >Oooh . . . "feudal patent" is an interesting turn of phrase.  Is that
> >original, or did you run across it somewhere else?  I'm curious.
> >
> >If it's your original material -- may I quote you with your blessing?
> 
> It's probably original in this context, although it may have some  
> historical meaning that I've stomped all over: too much random  
> reading... Anyway feel free to reuse it elsewhere if you find it  
> useful - just don't expect any tech support lol

Excellent.  Thanks.


> 
> >>What this all boils down to at core is this: both BSD and GPL folks
> >>are good, decent people. BSD folks like to give gifts to the
> >>individual developer whilst GPL folks prefer to give their gifts to
> >>the community of end-users - without the former the world would have
> >>a lot fewer clever developers, and without the latter we'd all be
> >>stuck with proprietary tools of dubious provenance.
> >
> >I don't entirely agree with this.  The FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and
> >other BSD-based OS projects prove that one need not exercise legal
> >control over distribution to ensure that the open source code stays
> >publicly available.  About 15,000 ports in the FreeBSD ports tree  
> >see to
> >that, at the very least.
> 
> I agree with you that it is possible for large open-source  
> communities to thrive without the GPL, and as someone who doesn't  
> choose to use it for my own projects I can't really argue in its  
> favour. However it does appear to be a very effective tool for  
> keeping software free where third-parties have less than honourable  
> motives and the resources to act upon them.

I guess part of that depends on your definition of "honorable" (sorry, I
tend to use USian spelling).


> 
> >>Which of the two groups any one of us falls in at any given time
> >>surely depends on what we're hoping to achieve with our current  
> >>project?
> >
> >There's some truth in that.  Of course, what I'd really like to  
> >achieve
> >in a broader sense is something like a hereditary public domain --  
> >once
> >something goes into it, it doesn't come back out.
> 
> I'm not entirely sure how something can be legitimately removed from  
> the public domain once it's in it. Which isn't to say that people  
> can't use public domain property in a proprietary manner, just that  
> that shouldn't impact on the ability of other people to use it in the  
> public domain. However I'm probably being very naive about this.

Any time you create a derivative work, based on something in the public
domain, the derivative work is subject to copyright law -- at least,
according to US law that's the case.  I used very casual terms to refer
to this process, as the original, unaltered work obviously is still in
the public domain -- but something as simple as adding a preface can
create a non-public domain work.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Brian K. Reid: "In computer science, we stand on each other's feet."