I also think you are grossly overreacting to the threat you perceive

No I am not. I am drawing the logical conclusions from your statements in this thread.

And I strongly suggest that you re-read, this, and this, and especially this, and then see if you are still able to make the claim that "I am concerned with software staying free,"?

Because you started this subthread by bandying the words "copyright", "sneaking", "illegal", "[im]moral" and the phrase "you'd actually be putting your company into a legally extremely vulnerable position".

It is the logical conclusion from the things that you had to say in those posts that leads to my conclusions.

As long as authors of "free software licenced modules", hold and state the opinions you expressed in those posts, their (*your*) actions call the whole basis of those licence agreements into question. All I did was draw your attention to them, and draw the logical inferences from them.

I re-read them. Yes, I still stand by my claim. We may have a different definition about what free software is. To make this discussion easier, maybe it would be worthwhile adopting the FSF definition just so there are no misunderstandings (I don't fully agree with it but agree enough that I can stand by it for the sake of the argument)?

All I have done in this thread is clarify existing facts. If you thought the PAL or the GPL or existing laws say or mean anything different from what I have said I would very much welcome you to tell me where you think I am mistaken. This has nothing to do at all with my or anybody elses attitude towards these licenses, if you receive a piece of software under a specific license you'd better try to understand it and agree with it as it stands (regardless of what you think the author may mean but isn't saying), otherwise ask the author to change the license or don't use the software. I don't understand how you can think that anything I have said calls the basis of these license agreements in question. The basis of these agreements is the authors desire for the software to remain free as per the definition of the license. In order to guarantee this continued freedom under current legislation it is essential that authors remain in possession of the copyright to their work, otherwise the software can and will be made unfree.

I've said this in another post to a subthread branch, maybe you didn't read that, I am personally not at all in favour of the existence of copyright itself. I think the world would be a far better place if copyright and other forms of intellectual property were simply abolished (and I think in the very long run it is inevitable that they will be). But as long as they exist I can not see any other way to maintain essential freedoms than by using the system against itself, as the copyleft licenses do.

Take the (as yet hypothetical) case we are arguing about. A corporate employee takes a piece of free software, removes the copyright and license and integrates the code into his own project. This employee has already shown supreme disregard for the original author's wishes by ignoring the (simple and easy to fulfil) requests in the license statement. Do you think said employee or his company would care if one presented a moral argument telling them that they were not being nice? I doubt that. Luckily there is a bigger stick, which is copyright law and which forces them to comply with the authors wish. Which is why I brought up legal liability (and just to be exact, "sneaking" was a quote from Morons post).

Now, if copyright law did not exist none of this would be an issue, the employee/company could take the code and do with it as they see fit and the author could just take any changes back if he wanted to, no danger to either party. But laws being what they are this one-way street does not work (other than to the detriment of freedom of the software and the original author).

I wonder whether I'm being completely unclear in trying to bring this point across. From your post I get the impression that maybe you think I'm not really in favour of freedom and rather that I want a system whereby an author of an original work should have complete control over how his work is used, who uses it and for what. So to be explicit, I am not in favour of that at all, I think it would be far better if we could share ideas and works indiscriminately and freely. But that ideal world is not here and meanwhile we have to do the best we can. Which is what the various FLOSS licenses are about. Ignoring a part of these licenses willy-nilly endangers their existence, the author and the freedom of his work.

Now, back to the question of logical conclusions. You have presented your view of the legal side of the software world which is that FLOSS licenses are immature and poorly tested and companies cannot rely on them to hold up in court. There is very little evidence to support this view IMO and quite a bit of evidence that suggests otherwise. The GPL has been tried and tested in courts as well as out-of-court settlements. Multi-billion dollar corporations (who have lawyers more versed in this subject than you or I) are betting their businesses on these licenses. As far as software licenses go they're not even that hard to understand by a layman. How can your logical conclusion be that businesses do not know what they are getting themselves into when they are subject to these licenses?

Again, the obligations you incur when using software under a free license are not onerous at all, all you need to do is recognize the freedom of the software and the attribution to the original author. Easily fulfilled, hardly any effort. If you'd rather not make that bit of effort and prefer pay big bucks for unfree software, that's your choice. But I cannot fathom how you can arrive at the conclusion that free software is unsuitable for commercial use. And you should not infer that this free software somehow restrains you from using it in the way you see fit, because that's just not true.


Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -- Brian W. Kernighan

Okay. Since you seem to read your own posts and not see what I see there, and you've brought up the relevant portion of the FSF definition, I'll quote both:

From your original post:

And I take it you've discussed licensing with MJD

From the FSF definition:

Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission.

There is the conflict in black and white and no amount of back-peddling on your behalf will change it.

For all your sentiments towards the ideal of free software, the rest of your words and foundless accusations serve only to deminish and damage the case for it, and increase the insecurity of those attempting to utilise it.

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

Take the (as yet hypothetical) case we are arguing about. A corporate employee takes a piece of free software, removes the copyright and license and integrates the code into his own project. This employee has already shown supreme disregard for the original author's wishes by ignoring the (simple and easy to fulfil) requests in the license statement. Do you think said employee or his company would care if one presented a moral argument telling them that they were not being nice? I doubt that. Luckily there is a bigger stick, which is copyright law and which forces them to comply with the authors wish. Which is why I brought up legal liability (and just to be exact, "sneaking" was a quote from Morons post).

Actually, most open software licenses, including the GPL, allows you to take someones code, remove the copyright, and incorporate it in your own project.

Open software licenses put restrictions on the distribution (and legal precedence has established that 'distribution' means 'crossing the company boundary') of software. Open software licenses can't be applied to the situation you describe - they'd only get into effect if the code from that project is sold, or given away.

Perl --((8:>*