From: mycroft@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Charles Hannum)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,talk.philosophy.misc,alt.usage.english,alt.society.anarchy
Subject: Re: Fund raising at the FSF
Date: 6 Jan 1993 02:44:13 GMT
Organization: /etc/organization
NNTP-Posting-Host: hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu


In article <1993Jan3.174518.18964@husc3.harvard.edu>
zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>
> Get it through your head, -- most people have no option, but to pay
> for distribution in one way or another.  Again, this is not what I
> find objectionable, except in conjunction with the following.

You are `free' to copy it from someone else, download it over a modem,
purchase a tape or CD-ROM from the FSF -- or from several other sources
-- or even purchase a tape drive.  The same applies to any `free'
program; it doesn't just magically show up on your computer, and no
organization is simply going to give a free tape to anyone who asks.

> Please try to understand my position.  As a sometime programmer, I am
> placed under an automatic obligation to attach the GPL license to any
> piece of my code that contains the most minute fraction of GNU, quite
> regardless of whether I wish to redistribute it.

You are bound by the legal terms of the GPL or the LGPL (whichever is
appropriate) if you wish to distribute a program containing a piece of
code which falls under either license.  You are under similar
obligation when you redistribute Berkeley software, or any other work
whatsoever since the Berne convention was adopted; you must leave the
copyright (if present) intact and obey its terms.  In the case of the
GPLs or the Berkeley copyright, that does not prevent you from either
distributing it or making a profit by doing so.

Your statement is also misleading.  To quote the GPL:

  These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole.  If
  identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
  and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
  themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
  sections when you distribute them as separate works.

To demonstrate, the fact that program X uses the GNU regexp routines
does not equate to it being required to have a `copyleft'.  Program X
could be distributed, without the regexp routines, under a completely
different license.  In fact, in this case, it could be distributed in
binary form, alongside a copy of the regexp routines in source form, as
permitted by the LGPL.  This would probably even apply if the regexp
routines used the GPL.

Another quote from the GPL:

  Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest
  your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to
  exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or
  collective works based on the Program.

> [...]; my difference from Stallman, now as it was over seven years
> ago, is that I regard his imposition of a *legal* bond as wholly
> incompatible with the billing of "Free Software".

If what you mean by `free' is `completely unrestricted', then you are
naive.  A passage from an article titled `What Is Copyleft?':

  The simplest way to make a program free is to put it in the public
  domain, uncopyrighted.  But this allows anyone to copyright and
  restrict its use against the author's wishes, thus denying others the
  right to access and freely redistribute it.  This completely perverts
  the original intent.

I have said before that one cannot legislate freedom; but given a
society which wholeheartedly believes in laws and punishment, we have
no choice but to apply the same rules when we play the game ourselves.

--
I speak only for me.

-- 
 \  /   Charles Hannum, mycroft@ai.mit.edu
 /\ \   PGP public key available on request.  MIME, AMS, NextMail accepted.
Scheme  White heterosexual atheist male (WHAM) pride!