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

Luis R. Rodriguez mcgrof at frijolero.org
Sun Aug 5 17:44:06 UTC 2012


On Sun, Aug 5, 2012 at 7:31 AM, Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn at ebb.org> wrote:
> mcgrof, I agree with most of points.  In fact, I agree that it's important
> we make a contribution.  I'd like us to think hard about the philosophy
> of software freedom and what policies should be implemented to ensure
> it.

*As* we argue over what is best philosophically, licensing needs to
move one. Whether we like it or not some folks / markets already
depend on assumptions of certain projects to have only embraced
certain software freedoms. We need to be respectful of that to create
predictability. If there is any ambiguity over licensing terms over
the GPLv2 we have no one but *ourselves* to blame.

Ultimately what I am arguing for is that in order for us to advance
licensing with further freedom clarifications / requirements we must
first widely review the philosophy publicly as we are right now.
Trying to piggy back on the older licenses new concrete freedoms is
simply a dirty trick even if the intention was to cover these
'loopholes' after the market already embraced a different set of
freedoms for it.

> I think you may have missed part of my point.  The key point I was
> trying to make was that revolutionary ideas are hard to come up with.
> If we rely in the idea that we can come up with such, we may be waiting
> a long time.  That's what I was getting at with rearranging ornaments.

Ah great point...

  Luis


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