On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:25:13 +0200, Jérôme M. Berger wrote:

> 	You can't reuse the material without explicit permission, even if
> it contains "free speech". 

That depends.  If a news story runs, say, the text of an address to the 
nation, the reporting agency doesn't "own" the text of that speech.  
Similarly, if they quote someone saying something - even at length - it 
may be useable without the permission of the reporting agency, because 
it's not *their* text.

> Under fair use, you can at most quote one or
> two sentences, not the complete contents. On the other hand, under fair
> use, there is no restriction on the license of your work no matter whom
> you quote or how you quote them. 

Fair use doctrine is not very specific in what is and isn't allowed.  A 
lot of what's allowed under it is due to court precedents, and it's not 
codified into copyright law.  IANAL, but I've read a fair amount on the 
subject and at least like to think I understand a lot of what I've read.

> GPL is completely different: it allows
> you to redistribute the whole contents with or without modification but
> it imposes some restrictions on the license you put you contribution in:
> it must also be GPL. This show that there is absolutely no relation
> whatsoever between "free speech" and the GPL (which doesn't prevent
> something to be both, but that's another question).

"Free speech" vs "free beer" isn't about equating OSS to "free speech", 
it's about defining the word "free".  I think that's what confuses a lot 
of people.  It's not an equation, it's an ideal.  It's that difference 
between Libre and Gratis.

Jim

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