Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 02:30:00 +0000 From: Anatoly Vorobey <mellon@pobox.com> To: "G. Adam Stanislav" <redprince@redprince.net> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why are people against GNU? WAS Re: 5.0 already? Message-ID: <20000514023000.A16663@happy.checkpoint.com> In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20000513180213.00894400@mail85.pair.com>; from redprince@redprince.net on Sat, May 13, 2000 at 06:02:13PM -0500 References: <3.0.6.32.20000513143506.00895650@mail85.pair.com> <391D71FE.1570F551@asme.org> <Pine.BSF.4.10.10005130735370.20100-100000@hydrant.intranova.net> <391D4DAD.FD80980A@picusnet.com> <003b01bfbcdc$6059fb40$a164aad0@kickme> <391D71FE.1570F551@asme.org> <20000513205610.A22103@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <3.0.6.32.20000513143506.00895650@mail85.pair.com> <20000514010614.A16058@happy.checkpoint.com> <3.0.6.32.20000513180213.00894400@mail85.pair.com>
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On Sat, May 13, 2000 at 06:02:13PM -0500, G. Adam Stanislav wrote: > At 01:06 14-05-2000 +0000, Anatoly Vorobey wrote: > >He has argued against > >intellectual property, in particular its restrictions in software; and > >that is a radical and doubtable idea, but to claim it's Communist is > >to make a fool of oneself, IMHO. > > OK, let me rephrase it: It is very Marxist. And, of course, Marx wrote the > Communist Manifesto. It's not Marxist either. > Stallman's idea is that software author has no rights. He produces > something, but it does not belong to him. It belongs to the masses. Chess games cannot be copyrighted. I don't know if you play chess, but if you do, you must know that chess games can be works of art, they can be extremely nontrivial, and contain exhilarating, new ideas that noone before had thought of. And yet, if you publish a game that you played, everyone is legally and morally free to republish it however he wants, without paying you a dime. Why? Because chess games are not intellectual property. When I copy a chess game that you played and give it to my friend, I don't deprive you of anything. I don't deprive you of your ability to enjoy your chess game. Certainly the law agrees with me here. Do you think the law is unfair? Are you willing to claim this is a Communist tendency and go lobby against it in the Congress? The law doesn't agree with me here if I copy an article written by you instead (even though a chess game might be much more imaginative, original and important than an article). Why? Because the state wants to give you an incentive to write articles, and is less interested to give you an incentive to play chess games. Unless you dwell on that, and realize that intellectual property is *not* automatically a natural, "God-given" right like material property is thought by many to be, you will repeat the same basic mistake in your reasoning. Stallman's idea is that intellectual objects belong to everyone who cares to use them, and the world has been living according to *his* idea for thousands of years, excluding the last two centuries. Are you willing to claim that the world has been Marxist for all time until the 18th century? A little historical and philosophical perspective would do wonders, I am sure. Why should you be able to stop me from using something created by you, if that act of using it absolutely does not hinder you in any way? If I live in a room you own, you can't live in it. If I copy a poem you wrote, you *can* continie reading it. The situation in which I have to pay you in order to copy that poem or that source code is *not* "natural": it is specifically designed to benefit *you* as the author. Which is fine with me (but not with Stallman), though I wish you would at least understand that. > The > "party" has full control over it. The "party" can even change the license > in the future to whatever it wants, without the author having any say. This is not grounded in fact. If I release a piece of software under GPL, you are *not* free to change the license; in fact, this lack of freedom is what is so aggravating about GPL to BSD people in the first place! What are you smoking? > In a Stallmanistic society the programmer has the duty to write software > because he has the ability to do so. He may expect nothing in return. That is not correct. However, it is correct that in Stallman's opinion, you should not be free to restrict the use of something you released. It is notable that Stallman is not trying to achieve that goal through forcing you to do that; he's not lobbying for changing the copyright law; he's trying to establish a body of software based on that principle. I don't quite see what's so totalitarian and Stalinistic about that. *You* are arguing that a programmer should be free to use whatever license he wants, and Stallman does *exactly that*. This is what copyleft is all about. > Everyone gives according to his abilities, everyone takes (in theory) > according to his needs. No, Stallman has never (AFAIK) said that. You're putting words in his mouth again. > It does not matter that it is intellectual property he talks about. It > still boils down to the society as represented by the party owning the > property. Of course, Stallman does not decry material property. Doing so > would be a tactical mistake because it would make him transparent and he > would not have gained the blind following he has now. Now you're being paranoid. This "he's lying and hiding his true intentions" argument, by the way, is a basic argument of Marxism. -- Anatoly Vorobey, mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/ "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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