Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Copyfree

[Aaron Wolf]

On 02/25/2016 12:57 PM, Aaron Wolf wrote:
> On 02/25/2016 10:04 AM, Fabio Pesari wrote:
>> On 02/25/2016 06:08 PM, Aaron Wolf wrote:
>>>
>>> I didn't say they were insane extremist anarchists. If they were, I
>>> wouldn't associate with them at all. They are specifically people who
>>> oppose copyright and patent laws, not *all* laws. (which is my position
>>> too, I just want copyright and patent abolition to be paired with (A)
>>> prohibition of DRM and (B) mandatory source release for published works,
>>> and the Copyfree folks actually agree with this, per our discussions;
>>> they oppose DRM but just see that as an issue beyond the Copyfree stuff).
>>
>> Your position is also mine, and for this reason I do not understand why
>> you would associate your project with Copyfree as a concept, since I
>> wouldn't.
>>
> 
> For background info, I first encountered the Copyfree folks in a debate
> about copyleft where I assumed they were being typical assholes who
> promote and shill for proprietary stuff. It was interesting that in the
> end, we turned out to be in agreement about wanting to see the end of
> copyrights, patents, and proprietary restrictions. After further
> discussion, it became clear that the particular folks were actually
> reasonable and not totally extremists (as shown by their willingness to
> help us, an aligned project in terms of freedom but being copyleft.
> 
> People who were totally dogmatic would reject us because they were
> copyleft. But the more I've talked to people in the community, the more
> I find reasonable people who basically agree with the copyfree
> perspective. They see copyleft as about enforcement, see most copyleft
> software having no ability to enforce practically.
> 
> For example: Another one of our advisors is Mike Linksvayer who is on
> the Board of the Software Freedom Conservancy, advocates for their GPL
> enforcement, helped with copyleft.org, and yet he's sympathetic to the
> Copyfree viewpoint as well. See
> http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2013/11/25/upgrade-to-0/ (the rest of his
> blog is interesting reading too).
> 
> The thing is, the Copyfree people *do* support CC0 and public domain.
> The primary reason they don't focus on public domain is in fact
> *practical* because there are legal concerns about the practical matter
> of getting things to be recognized as public domain, so they advocate
> the most effect license terms that are comparably unrestricted.
> 
> In the end, most of the advising and discussion with them when they were
> active was on purely practical matters that didn't even relate to
> licensing. They're nice aligned people regardless of the Copyfree thing.
> We had some differences of opinion about the Copyfree stuff but agreed
> that Snowdrift.coop would respect those users who have that political
> view. It's not just that there's these couple Copyfree folks who are
> some fringe. There's lots of people with some sympathies there who
> grudgingly go with copyleft because they agree about the tactic but
> somewhat dislike it.
> 
> Copyfree represents the critique of copyleft that isn't coming from a
> pro-proprietary view. We like the idea of including diverse viewpoints
> and not being just an echo chamber. We found the Copyfree people to be
> sensible and reasonable.
> 
>> My issue with it is that you are giving Copyfree some visibility it
>> doesn't deserve. It's a ripoff of older ideas, it is incompatible with
>> both free software and open source and its politics do not reflect the
>> real world.
>>
>>> Yes, this stuff is political, more than OSI, but it's not *that*
>>> political. The primary reason it isn't just an emphasis on public domain
>>> is because of the legal quirks of the inadequacies of public domain in
>>> practice today. Absolutely *nothing* that is "Copyfree" is any better
>>> for proprietary advocates or any worse for software freedom than public
>>> domain. The Copyfree licenses do nothing to promote proprietary software
>>> any more than public domain software does.
>>
>> Public domain makes a strong political statement: a refusal to partake
>> in the copyright system, including attribution.
>>
>> If making a political statement against copyright is the point, I don't
>> see why not go all the way.
>>
>>> It's not especially healthy. It's valuing principle over practical
>>> concerns. They want no place in which copyright interferes with software
>>> freedom *even* if the interference is a copyleft tactic protecting
>>> freedom by blocking proprietization.
>>>
>>> This is a political value question: do we support *stopping* proprietary
>>> software even if it *hurts* free software by causing incompatibilities?
>>> I say "hmm, tough question, but I lean toward 'yes' better to accept the
>>> incompatibility-side-effects in order to block proprietary software".
>>> The Copyfree folks say "better to accept the side-effect of proprietary
>>> derivatives in order to maximize compatibility for those of us using
>>> free software". That view isn't crazy.
>>
>> That view is crazy, because incompatibility is not caused by copyleft,
>> but rather by developers.
>>
> 
> That's too simplistic. Copyleft *inherently* causes incompatibility by
> its very mechanism. Anyone denying this is just in denial. Our page
> describes how important it is to *minimize* this side-effect by
> encouraging everyone to use GPLv3+ compatible licenses. But that doesn't
> mean this is causing the incompatibility.
> 
> Sure, people should use "or later" clause, but there's copyleft licenses
> besides the GPL even. At any rate, *I* think that we can minimize
> incompatibility without giving up the copyleft tactic and that's what I
> advocate for. But I don't think everyone who takes any other view than
> mine is automatically crazy. There's merit to their view, it's simply
> not crazy.
> 
>> If everyone used "GPL or any later version" from the beginning and if
>> nobody created their own licenses in order to avoid the GPL,
>> incompatibilities would never have arisen.
>>
>> Incompatibilities arise only in two cases (I can think of):
>>
>> 1) The developers don't use the "or any later version" clause
>> 2) The developers want to merge GPL code into permissive code
>>
>> Reason 2 cannot be allowed for obvious reasons (that code can go into
>> proprietary software at any point), but you can always fork a
>> permissively licensed project into a GPL project, so this is a moot point.
>>
>> Reason 1 is unfortunate when it happens due to ignorance (people who
>> just stick a LICENSE file in their repository) or when the original
>> contributors are unreachable, I give you that.
>>
>> But what about those developers who intentionally use previous versions
>> of the GPL to allow corporations to implement things like DRM, SaaSS and
>> Tivoization? That is done with bad intent, and they are entirely to
>> blame for that, not copyleft.
>>
> 
> Yeah, and I agree with you. But *reasonable* non-crazy people who aren't
> advocating for proprietary terms don't completely agree. We can build a
> healthy community around the idea that you see the world as black and
> white and treat everyone who disagrees with you at all as all being the
> same and all either corrupt or crazy. Sometimes you say, "there are
> people with compatible overall values that want to help our mission, and
> we include them and allow them to have a voice as long as they treat us
> reasonably too and their involvement is an overall benefit to the
> broader mission".
> 

Oops, I meant "we CAN'T build a healthy community…" in that sentence
just now.

> I'd much rather draw the line where we make it clear that the people
> advocating for proprietary software are the problem and not push out
> those free software advocates who have different tactical views or
> priorities than us.
>