Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: BISON, GCC, and the GNU public license. (Re: increasing yacc states)
Message-ID: <5303@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 27 Jul 89 20:08:05 GMT
References: <Jul.5.09.29.33.1989.23541@topaz.rutgers.edu> <26@ark1.nswc.navy.mil> <26695@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Lines: 104

Round and round we go...

In article <26695@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike (I'll think of something yet) Meyer) writes:
> In article <5271@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
> <In article <26609@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike (I'll think of something yet) Meyer) writes:
> <> The GNU General Public License isn't about profit or sales, it's about
> <> the right to give away neat tools to our friends.

> <No, it's about the right of intellectual property. It uses the laws
> <that are based on that right to deny it to other people.

> Well, it is about the right of intellectual property.

I thought you said it was about giving away neat tools to our friends.

> It uses the
> busted laws to insure that all people have the right to the
> intellectual properties it covers.

Let's analyse this statement.

	a) The license covers intellectual properties. Whose
	   properties? Not mone, I didn't write them. It must
	   be the Free Software Foundation's. OK.
	b) It ensures that everyone has a right to the FSF's
	   intellectual properties. OK.
	c) Intellectual property laws are busted. That's a matter
	   of opinion, so we can ignore it.

You seem to have left out one part:

It also covers any software that includes any FSF software. That is,
it makes the wholly remarkable jump to including any such software as
being the intellectual property of the Free Software Foundation.

Don't you suppose that the author of a program that happens to have
been compiled with the GCC compiler using the GNU libraries should
have more right to the program than the FSF?

If RMS just wanted to keep the FSF's properties inviolate he could just
require they be distributed with the package, or made available on
request. That's laudable.

> It in no way denies any intellectual property rights to anyone, any
> more than any other license agreement does.

Sure it does. It denies property rights to the author of any software
that includes any FSF software... including, say, a parser compiled
with BISON that used the GNU skeleton. If you say this does not deny
anyone any intellectual property rights then we're obviously not using
the same language.

> To claim otherwise is to lie.

Let's analyse this statement.

You're calling me a liar, right?

> Don't hoard your software. There are other ways to make money off of
> it. [I'll call this <statement A>]

Not if other people are "hoarding" their software.

> <I'm sure you can see other problems with that. If you can't see how
> <giving up intellectual property rights can hurt you it's a failure
> <in your imagination, not in the concept.

> Your statement is ambiguous, and in either case makes an assertion I
> haven't said anything about.

No, it's not ambiguous. I can't see anything in it that would lead to
interpretation two. I assume you're just playing logical games.

> Interpretation 1) Me giving up my intellectual property rights to one
> or more pieces of software can hurt me. Obvious.

See <statement A> above. If it's obvious, why are you urging people to
do so?

> On the other hand, it may also do me more good than harm.

It may, depending on the software. It may also not.

> What's amusing about all this is that the GPL isn't that much worse
> than licenses for commercial software that I've seen. How about
> $2000/year for the compiler (for an IBM PC!?!?), plus royalties on the
> library if you distribute binaries.

How about $500 for the compiler with no royalties? That's the sort of
license agreement you see these days. Market forces arising from the
competition between different commercial compilers seem to be working
just fine.

> Even worse, copyleft is a _lot_ less restrictive than any of a large
> number of programs that are PA, which just say "freely
> redistributable, except for commercial purposes."

This is a completely different subject and entirely irrelevent to this
discussion.
-- 
Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
Business: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. | "...helping make the world
Personal: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com.   `-_-' |  a quote-free zone..."
Quote: Have you hugged your wolf today?  'U`  |    -- hjm@cernvax.cern.ch