[copyleft-next] Platonic ideals, restrictiveness and weaker copyleft

Luis R. Rodriguez mcgrof at frijolero.org
Fri Aug 3 18:25:58 UTC 2012


On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 5:12 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn at ebb.org> wrote:
> We're rounding about 20 years out from the genius idea of copyleft.
> Some people don't like RMS or his ideas, but I think no one denies that
> copyleft was an invention of great genius.

Agreed.

> Here we are, the next generation,

Speak for yourself, -- or two generations ;)

> rearranging little ornaments on the
> tree of the genius idea of copyleft.  I long ago made my peace with the
> idea that my life's work is to merely rearrange ornaments on the tree of
> software freedom.  In that vein, I suggest that copyleft-next is
> perhaps, a licensing drafting placeholder, that keeps trying to
> rearrange these ornaments until someone among us looks at it and has an
> epiphany.  Those only come along once every generation or two on any
> given topic.
>
> There's value in doing this exercise, but we should be realistic about
> what we're doing.  Copyleft-next, in my estimation, is looking for the
> Theory of Everything for copyleft licensing.  It's slow work and there
> may not be a breakthrough in our time.  And, it may not exist at all.
> But we should look anyway and see what we find in the meantime.

Agreed but I'd like to raise another point which you seem to have missed.

There is no denying @rms' genius in not only dreaming up copyleft but
also architecting it and spread-heading other philosophical
breakthroughs on software freedom. Software freedoms need to be
understood, debated, educated, and written about as such: as software
freedom philosophy. I have much to say in this regard but first I want
to get straight to the point I want to make here: licensing strategies
are instruments available at our disposal to allow us to implement in
the real world protection for software freedoms we dream up as
technology advances.

There is philosophy, there is licensing and lastly there are
strategies on how to introduce these software freedoms into our
worlds. In capitalist societies the way we get introduced to software
freedoms are through the markets so that users can actually use these
software freedoms with real products. Surely we in the community can
make our own hardware, but to mass produce -- you need some sort of
markets *today*. As I see it anti-tivoization (live with it) and
afferoness (I realize its latin but this is short and sweet and I
think we all get this is from the AGPL) are and should be considered
as *evolutions* in software freedoms. To some, the lack of such
freedoms were actually considered as loopholes in the good 'ol GPLv2.
Weather or not anti-tivoization or afferoness were implicit in the
GPLv2 and making them explicit in future licenses were necessary or
not may something worthy of debate -- but to me it does not matter, in
the long term the actual use case will only be validated in court.
There is another oversight here: as free software philosophers its
selfish to believe that developers themselves or companies (we live in
a capitalist world, live with it) could not have their own practical
interpretation downstream of the GPLv2. For better or worse, the GPLv2
is understood in the market as having only certain requirements. Its
this last part that I believe creates the tension between church,
industry and the community. Free software philosophers tend to be
purists while the industry / market / random developers / support
engineers / etc may not *care* much or at all and simply want to
comply to the minimum requirements. There is plenty of evidence to
support this.

While it may somewhat true that we are just re-arranging ornaments in
a tree of the genius idea of copyleft that @rms dreamt up a long time
ago in a galaxy far far away -- there are real life strategical
challenges that we engineers in the industry face in pursuing large
markets to learn how to play properly in the tree and also *move along
in the tree* and maybe even *help with the tree*. There are
strategical ways to place ornaments. @rms may want the tree up
yesterday and for everyone to appreciate all the shiny ornaments on
it, but even just the education alone could use some strategical and
tactful placement. First get folks to understand software freedoms.
Consumers still do not understand they have such freedoms, that alone
is one problem, its no wonder why its hard to convince the entire
*industry* of valuing then other evolutions on the idea of software
freedoms such as anti-tivoization and affernoness. If our modern day
engineers *barely* get the first set of software freedoms, and if we
still even have the BSD hackers diehards hacking away blissfully
ignoring their own software freedoms it shows a few things:

  1) Education on software freedom could use some love
  2) Even after understanding software freedoms, some may be happy in
giving some freedoms up

I can tell you as someone growing up as a second generation geek with
software freedoms being readily available to you -- the actual
philosophical effort to educate properly on the importance of software
freedoms simply sucks. We all do our part on trying to educate on this
but this is not getting us closer on education as fast as we need it,
as fast as technology is advancing. And even if people are educated --
some may still want to rot away without software freedoms. That's
choice, and that's fine. The value of freedom must needs to be
appreciated eventually by end users.

Whether we like it or not embracement of evolutions on software
philosophy are slow and this slow pace is really only a reflection of
the markets in which software freedoms would thrive in. Software is
nothing but a very small instrument as part of a larger Technology
Industrial Complex -- software, as well as the freedoms therein will
evolve as the technology evolves. Whether we like it or not there's an
implicit symbiotic relationship between software freedoms and
technology as part of a larger Technology Industrial Complex. My point
here is we can be more tactful to ensure that software freedoms are
not only well understood but also well *respected*, *predicted*, and
eventually highly *prioritized* as a *huge market attribute*. I have
an idea on the later aspects of this but this idea is still being
socially brewed.

  Luis


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