Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,talk.philosophy.misc,misc.legal
Subject: Re: Fund raising at the FSF
From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Date: 7 Jan 93 20:27:07 EST
 <1993Jan7.123025.19069@husc3.harvard.edu> <MIB.93Jan7152945@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <MIB.93Jan7152945@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu> 
mib@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Michael I Bushnell) writes:

>In article <1993Jan7.123025.19069@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

MZ:
>>You haven't read the GPL.  The FSF legally owns all code licensed under
>>the GPL, under *any* reasonable definition of intellectual property.  

MIB:
>This is false, and it's important that people recognize it.

This is known as an _exordium_, and it is important that people
realize that it does not constitute a refutation.

MIB:
>A copy of software released under the GPL maintains its original
>copyright.  If you write something, and release it under the GPL, then
>*that* *copy* is bound by the GPL.  But, as the copyright owner, you
>are free to release other copies under other terms, as you see fit.

You are contradicting yourself.  A copyright is a temporary, exclusive
legal right, which entitles its owner to produce, publish, and sell
copies of his original work.  As such, copyright attaches to the work,
and not to any specific copy thereof.  The GPL expressly restricts all
forms of copying, modification, sublicensing, distribution, or transfer
of any code licensed under it, including, in virtue of its infamous
"virus infection" provision, any program which contains GNU or its part,
with or without modifications.  In other words, the GPL supersedes any
residual rights of the copyright owner under its own terms.  It is
ridiculous to suggest that only a particular copy of the work is so
bound, for licensing, tike copyright, applies to the text type, rather
than any of its instantiated tokens.

MIB:
>The rights given in the GPL are intentionally irrevocable: if I have a
>GPL'd file, the rights I have can't be removed by the owner, because
>my license is perpetual.  But there is no legal provision which
>prohibits the owner of the file from releasing other copies, not
>including that license.

Surely you must be joking.  If the GPL only applies to *that* particular
copy, what is there to prevent me, a bemused bystander, from making a
duplicate and releasing it on my own terms, against the ostensible
provisions of the selfsame GPL?  In my circles, this is known as a
_reductio ad absurdum_.

MIB:
>The FSF, of course, would discourage someone from doing this.  We
>think all your software, all copies of it, should be free.  But that
>doesn't mean that when you use a license like ours (even verbatim like
>ours) that your software somehow becomes owned by us, as if we are
>somehow exempt from the normal rules of intellectual property.

Well, bubba, you could have fooled me.  Aside from your specious use of
the term "free", as long as your license allows you to contravene the
existing copyright by mandating the terms of copying, modification,
sublicensing, distribution, or transfer, it sure as shit looks like you
are regarding yourself as somehow exempt from the normal rules of
intellectual property.  Whether or not this is actually the case, is a
matter only the courts can decide.

>	-mib
>--
>Michael I. Bushnell      |     Watch, for you do not know when the master of 
>+1 617 625 4518 (H)     -+-    the house will come, in the evening, or at
>+1 617 253 8568 (W)      |     midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning, 
>mib@gnu.ai.mit.edu       |     lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.

I reserve the right to revise my current opinions in accordance with a
reasonable legal argument.  However, it does not look like one will be
forthcoming from your side.

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."

Xref: sparky gnu.misc.discuss:4348 talk.philosophy.misc:3242 misc.legal:22285