Re: GNU/Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Richard M. Stallman wrote:

> 	The current
>    models have created a conduit for socialist disintegration of the 
>    american hi tech
>    markets, loss of jobs, and have funnelled technology out of the 
>    country.  Legal
>    defense funds should be the biggest red flags of all.  If this system 
>    you devised really
>    works, why all the litigation?  Why all the need for legal defense funds 
>    and patent
>    infringement insurance?
>
> I think you are combining several different issues that need to be
> addressed separately.  The GNU GPL works well for the problems it was
> designed to solve, especially the problem of having to compete with
> proprietary modified versions of your own free software.  It succeeds,
> to the extent copyright holders enforce it, in ensuring that all users
> of the program get the source code and are free to run, change, and
> redistribute the program.  But it does not solve all the world's
> problems, or even all of software's ethical problems.  That is too
> much to expect.
>
> No software license can make software patents go away, nor can any
> software license by itself change the larger patterns--the
> globalization of business power, the erosion of democracy, the
> increasing concentration of wealth.  Those problems are real, and I
> don't know how to solve them, so I hope someone else finds a way.
> Meanwhile, the GNU GPL does what we can reasonably ask of it.
>
>    This movement has spawned a global attitude that has no 
>    respect
>    for IP rights,
>
> That attitude does not come from me.  I think it comes from the use of
> the biased and misleading term "IP rights".  That term lumps together
> more than a dozen disparate laws, which have little in
> common--including, for instance, copyright law and patent law, whose
> practical effects in the software field are completely different.
>
> Discussing these various laws as "IP" tends to lead people to
> simplistic, across-the-board views.  It also leads people to imagine
> that there is some sort of general "principle of IP" that these
> various laws were designed to embody (which is historically false).
> That's how you get so many people who are "for IP" or "against IP".
>
> To avoid these confusions, I decided not to use the term "IP" (except
> when it means "Internet Protocol").  It is clearer to discuss
> copyright, patents, and trademarks as three separate issues; that way,
> we can think about each of them in terms of how it affects society,
> without being drawn towards simplistic, across-the-board views.
>
> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml for more explanation
> of this issue.
>
>
>  
Richard,

It is within your power to revise the GP L to address these issues.  You 
should consider
doing so.  I would be happy to propose several changes in future 
revisions.  Let me know where,
when, and what to provide.  You can be assured I'll provide some very 
excellent input on
these issues. 

Jeff

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