On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:48:12 -0400, Nicolas George wrote:

> Jim Henderson  wrote in message <487e354f$1@news.povray.org>:
>> Unless the publisher explicitly grants permission for that type of
>> distribution as a one-off.
> 
> That makes a lot of exceptions to avoid the drawbacks of something,
> while its usefulness remains to be proven.

It's worked for software publishers for quite some time...

Jim

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On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:05:20 -0400, Jim Henderson wrote:

> It's worked for software publishers for quite some time..

*shareware* publishers.  Sheesh, if I could type what I was thinking, 
that'd be nice. :-)

Jim

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Nicolas George <nicolas$george@salle-s.org> wrote:
> There are people who cut themselves while peeling vegetables: that is not a
> reason to blame knifes, is it? As long as no one significant tries to
> confuse people, you can not blame the FSF if stupid authors use it without
> being sure they understand correctly.

  However, I *do* blame the FSF from dissing (if not even outright attacking)
any license which prohibits monetary profit, and calling it "not free",
with a pejorative tone of voice.

  They should understand that some people want to contribute to the free
software world, but they might really not want anyone making money from
their hard work.

> And, by the way, I do not consider the wish of the original author as
> something sacred. The society chose to grant the authors exclusive rights on
> their work because it is supposed to help them to earn a living from it,
> thus allowing to produce more work for the greater good of the whole human
> species. But there is no fundamental right to restrict the diffusion of a
> work, just a compromise between unrestricted distribution and author
> remuneration.

  The author has all the moral, ethical, philosophical and legal right
to prohibit people from making money by selling his hard work he is
himself distributing for free.

> >   I still have the opinion that even if you restrict your software
> > license so that it cannot be distributed for money, it can still be
> > called free.

> I have the opinion that you should stop writing "free" altogether in this
> thread, and always use either "gratis" or "libre".

  I would really like you to say the FSF that!

> Let me rephrase your
> sentence:

> #   I still have the opinion that even if you restrict your software
> # license so that it cannot be distributed for money, it can still be
> # called GRATIS.

  Wrong. I still think the software can be considered free, as in freedom,
as in libre (and of course as in no-cost) if the author doesn't want anyone
making money by selling it.

  If you want *absolute* freedom, that is, that anyone can do *anything*
they want with the software, then you must allow things like including
the code in proprietary software, removing any copyrights, etc.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Jim Henderson wrote:
| On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:28:50 +0200, Jérôme M. Berger wrote:
|
|> 	The issue here isn't what the *original* author can do. The
| problem
|> arises when somebody wants to reuse parts of the original code. The
|> sequence of events goes like this:
|> ~ - You write some code and license it under the GPL; ~ - I take your
|> code (or part of it), write some more code that interfaces with yours
|> and want to distribute it. Then I can't choose the license under
which I
|> distribute *my* code. The GPL has taken a fundamental freedom
from me,
|> just because I interface with some code that is GPLed. Therefore
I don't
|> regard the GPL as "free" (on the other hand, I do regard the LGPL as
|> "free": it ensures that the LGPLed code will remain available
while not
|> restricting my freedom to write and distribute code that
interfaces with
|> it).
|
| Well, as a software developer, I *may* not want people to use my
code in
| something they make money off of, or something that removes my
copyright
| from my code, or something that is closed source.
|
| I can *totally* understand why an author may choose to pick a license
| like this - because they want to be free to see how their code is
being
| used.  BSD isn't free to see how Microsoft has implemented the BSD
TCP/IP
| stack, because the MS code is closed, even though it's based on
the BSD
| stack (or rather, it is the BSD stack - evidenced by behaviours of
the
| stack itself that are unique to that implementation).
|
| It's all a question of what the original author desires be done with
| their code.  I can see that maybe the FSF point of view is that the
| original author should be free to see how their code is used and
to not
| have others profit financially from it.
|
	You're missing the point here. I agree with you that this is the
original author's choice and his right to impose whatever
restrictions he wants on his code. The point here is that the GPL is
*not* free (as in freedom) because of the restrictions it imposes.
If people want to put software under a non-free license it's their
right (and I have done it too), but they should be aware that it is
not free.

		Jerome
- --
+------------------------- Jerome M. BERGER ---------------------+
|    mailto:jeb### [at] freefr      | ICQ:    238062172            |
|    http://jeberger.free.fr/     | Jabber: jeb### [at] jabberfr   |
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Nicolas George wrote:

|> 	The issue here isn't what the *original* author can do. The problem
|> arises when somebody wants to reuse parts of the original code. The
|> sequence of events goes like this:
|> ~ - You write some code and license it under the GPL;
|> ~ - I take your code (or part of it), write some more code that
|> interfaces with yours and want to distribute it. Then I can't choose
|> the license under which I distribute *my* code.
|
| (For the sake of argument, I take over the "you" character in your
message.)
|
| The whole point is that, if you took some of my code to do yours,
then it is
| not just _your_ code: it is _our_ code.
|
| The FSF lawyers make a lot of noise and smoke, and pretend that
the "viral"
| effect of the GPL is wider that it actually is. If your code
interfaces with
| GPL code, but do not contain any GPL code itself, there is
absolutely no
| legal basis for your code to be under GPL. The resulting binary,
on the
| other hand, as a mix between GPL code and your code, could not be
| re-distributed under a more restrictive license.

	Well, AFAIK that particular aspect of the GPL has never been tested
in court. But this is precisely what the GPL forbids. In particular,
if I take a GPL DLL and if I write a program that uses this DLL,
even if my program does not contain any outside code itself, I must
release it under the GPL (or go to court to have this aspect
clarified, which is a chancy proposition).

		Jerome
- --
+------------------------- Jerome M. BERGER ---------------------+
|    mailto:jeb### [at] freefr      | ICQ:    238062172            |
|    http://jeberger.free.fr/     | Jabber: jeb### [at] jabberfr   |
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Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> but just want to cause arguments about the definition of "free software".

It worked. ;-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
  Helpful housekeeping hints:
   Check your feather pillows for holes
    before putting them in the washing machine.

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Warp  wrote in message <487e5c30@news.povray.org>:
>   They should understand that some people want to contribute to the free
> software world, but they might really not want anyone making money from
> their hard work.

And the people who try to limit commercial uses should stop and think two
minutes about what money could be made from the software they are
distributing, and realize that in most cases, their condition is totally
useless and counterproductive.

>   The author has all the moral, ethical, philosophical and legal right
> to prohibit people from making money by selling his hard work he is
> himself distributing for free.

Legal, yed. Moral, ethical and philosophical, I do not agree.

>   I would really like you to say the FSF that!

I am not currently trolling with the FSF.

>   Wrong. I still think the software can be considered free, as in freedom,
> as in libre (and of course as in no-cost) if the author doesn't want anyone
> making money by selling it.

And I do not think so.

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Jim Henderson  wrote in message <487e4670$1@news.povray.org>:
> It's worked for software publishers for quite some time...

I try avoid shareware as much as possible. Could you explain in what sense
it "works"?

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> 	Well, AFAIK that particular aspect of the GPL has never been tested
> in court.

That is true, but that should not prevent people from reading the law, and
trying to understand it.

>	    But this is precisely what the GPL forbids. In particular,
> if I take a GPL DLL and if I write a program that uses this DLL,
> even if my program does not contain any outside code itself, I must
> release it under the GPL

... and as far as I understand the law, there is absolutely no case for the
source code of the program in this situation. For the binary, on the other
hand, even shared libraries come with declaratives headers, which are under
GPL too.

The argument of the FSF lawyers here is that the program needs the GPL
library, it does not work without it. But the whole principle of the
copyright laws is to consider software as a work of art. There is no need
for a work of art to work.

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On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:37:22 -0400, Nicolas George wrote:

> Jim Henderson  wrote in message <487e4670$1@news.povray.org>:
>> It's worked for software publishers for quite some time...
> 
> I try avoid shareware as much as possible. Could you explain in what
> sense it "works"?

Shareware authors get their software included in magazines and such 
fairly regularly - all that has to happen is the publisher asks 
permission (or the author asks the publisher to include it on a 
compilation disc).

I've seen this successfully used for many years.  Personally, I don't 
think it's too much to ask if the authors want to control distribution 
that the publishers who want to include it ask for permission.  After 
all, if I (as a website owner) want to repurpose a Magazine's content, 
I'm required by law to ask for permission unless I want to excerpt under 
fair use.  If I want to reproduce the content in its entirety, I MUST ask 
permission.

Why should software be any different if the author chooses to follow this 
standard convention?

Jim

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