Can I GPL?
J J Simas
However, I wrote it as an employee of an educational institution. I've
asked the educational institution to GPL it, but they don't want to.
However, they said that I could take a copy of the program, strip out their
copyright notices, and GPL it with me as the copyright owner. However, I
don't know enough about copyrighting to know whether this is okay. Of
course, they still want the copyright on their own copy of the program.
It seems to me that if copyrights are on the physical "copy" level, then
there is no problem. They would have effectively given me a copyright on
one copy of the program. Once I own the copyright on one copy, then I can
make an unlimited number of copies and can license them to anyone else that
I want, and allow them to make copies themselves, like the GPL.
However, if copyrights are on the logical "program" level, then there is a
problem. So, someone cannot give me the copyright on a copy of a program
and keep the copyright on another copy of it. And if this was the case,
then I wouldn't have the right to GPL the program/library.
Anyone know which it is?
Jason
Isaac
>I wrote a very useful and robust Java library that I'd like to GPL.
>However, I wrote it as an employee of an educational institution. I've
>asked the educational institution to GPL it, but they don't want to.
>
>However, they said that I could take a copy of the program, strip out their
>copyright notices, and GPL it with me as the copyright owner. However, I
>don't know enough about copyrighting to know whether this is okay. Of
>course, they still want the copyright on their own copy of the program.
>
What you've posted suggests that you can release your work under the
GPL. It is okay for the author to release the work under more than
one license.
Isaac
J J Simas
Okay, any more opinions on this from anyone else?
Jason
"Isaac" <is...@latveria.castledoom.org> wrote in message
news:slrn95f4b2...@latveria.castledoom.org...
John Hasler
> Okay, any more opinions on this from anyone else?
I agree with Isaac, but you should get your employer to put the permission
in writing.
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin
cbbr...@hex.net
Interesting that the institution seems to be permitting this.
It seems increasingly common for educational institutions to treat
things written there as being produced as "works for hire," where the
owner of copyright is actually the institution, not the author.
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "ac.notelrac.teneerf@" "454aa"))
<http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/>
I'm a Lisp variable -- bind me!
Isaac
>
>Interesting that the institution seems to be permitting this.
>
>It seems increasingly common for educational institutions to treat
>things written there as being produced as "works for hire," where the
>owner of copyright is actually the institution, not the author.
The institution hasn't disclaimed their right to treat the
work as a work for hire. It seems more like they are willing to
share ownership with the employee at least as far as allowing
the employee to release the work under the GPL. Still very
interesting.
I wonder why the institution is uncomfortable with releasing the
work themselves under the GPL. Doing so wouldn't compromise any of
the rights they are holding onto by doing allowing the employee
to release the work.
Isaac
Russ Allbery
> I wonder why the institution is uncomfortable with releasing the work
> themselves under the GPL. Doing so wouldn't compromise any of the
> rights they are holding onto by doing allowing the employee to release
> the work.
They may be worried about some expectation that they enforce the licensing
scheme.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
John Hasler
> It seems increasingly common for educational institutions to treat things
> written there as being produced as "works for hire," where the owner of
> copyright is actually the institution, not the author.
J J Simas (the OP) wrote:
> I wrote it as an employee of an educational institution.
That makes it clearly a work for hire, regardless of the type of
institution.
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org (John Hasler)
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI
J J Simas
They think there may be some legal risk or annoyances.
>
> Isaac
Isaac
>That makes it clearly a work for hire, regardless of the type of
>institution.
Not so fast. Only certain types of works can be works for hire regardless
of the status as an employee. It is not completely clear that computer
programs can be works for hire. While the list of works that the statute
says can be works for hire isn't exhaustive, it does not include software.
Isaac
Isaac
>
>They may be worried about some expectation that they enforce the licensing
>scheme.
>
Now that you've suggested one thing, I can come up with a number of
other reasons why an entity might not want a program distributed with
their name on it.
Isaac
Jeffrey Siegal
> On Sun, 7 Jan 2001 02:05:06 GMT, John Hasler <jo...@dhh.gt.org> wrote:
> >That makes it clearly a work for hire, regardless of the type of
> >institution.
>
> Not so fast. Only certain types of works can be works for hire regardless
> of the status as an employee.
Nope, you're thinking of works done by an indepenent contractor under a
"work for hire" contract. Anything is a work for hire if done within
the scope of employment.
John Hasler
> I wonder why the institution is uncomfortable with releasing the work
> themselves under the GPL. Doing so wouldn't compromise any of the rights
> they are holding onto by doing allowing the employee to release the work.
Perhaps the person he is negotiating with does not understand the issues,
or perhaps he asked specifically for what he has described here and they
see no harm in giving it to him.
Russ Allbery
> cbbrowne writes:
>> It seems increasingly common for educational institutions to treat
>> things written there as being produced as "works for hire," where the
>> owner of copyright is actually the institution, not the author.
> J J Simas (the OP) wrote:
>> I wrote it as an employee of an educational institution.
> That makes it clearly a work for hire, regardless of the type of
> institution.
Probably; it does depend on whether he used the resources of the
institution and was doing it as part of his job, but yeah, most likely it
does.
If you didn't sign some sort of copyright assignment when you went to work
for the place, things you do on your own time with your own equipment are
yours regardless of the opinions of your employer. Most places make you
sign a patent assignment, but I haven't seen many copyright assignments
yet (so either way you own the copyright, just not any resulting patents).
It's much less clear for students. Stanford has a fairly clear written
policy on the subject of copyrights and when the university will claim
them.
Even if you're on your own time, if you use your employer's computers,
they may have a claim. If that's an issue, pick your employer
appropriately.
Jeffrey Siegal
> Even if you're on your own time, if you use your employer's computers,
> they may have a claim. If that's an issue, pick your employer
> appropriately.
Or just use your own computer...
Russ Allbery
Sure, that works too. Personally, I'm much more comfortable not worrying
about it, and therefore have chosen my employer appropriately. I'm not
interested in working for someplace that worries about stuff like that,
cares what I do on my staff workstation provided it doesn't violate the
network usage policy, or engages in other similar behaviors (like
dictating what network resources I can access or monitoring how I spend my
time).
Pat McCann
> They think there may be some legal risk or annoyances.
There always is, though they've probably reduced it by having the
program distributed without their name. And different people are
comfortable with varying degrees of risk.
Erroneous copyright claims might be considered fraud. If it's
owned by U. and you, it should claim copyright by U. and you.
If it's owned only by them, you know the right thing to do.
Their statement that you may claim copyright might not be
considered validly executed transfer of their copyrights to you.
Sounds like they didn't even intend that. Maybe joint ownership.
I would want it in writing in any event, but that's a risk factor you
and your lawyer need to consider. I don't know. They sound naive.
I'm not sure, but I suppose that all copyright owners must agree
on licensing terms. Otherwise, one could effectively give the other's
IP away which might upset a lot of folks (like Linux kernel owners).
Seek legal advice from a legal practitioner. This isn't that; just
some unreliable comments on things mentioned in your message.
P.S. I think software developed with public money should belong
to the public (ie, be in the public domain), not to the government or
its institutions or contractors. I guess there's a fuzzy line where
the question of who is paying for it comes up, but I'd be glad to
draw the line, and with universities it's very easy to do so.
Isaac
>P.S. I think software developed with public money should belong
>to the public (ie, be in the public domain), not to the government or
>its institutions or contractors. I guess there's a fuzzy line where
>the question of who is paying for it comes up, but I'd be glad to
>draw the line, and with universities it's very easy to do so.
I'd think with universities it might be incredibly difficult to do.
A department's budget might come from a variety of sources with
some being private and some public. It would be pretty easy to
juggle the money around so that software development gets done
with private money.
Isaac
Isaac
Yes, your right again.
Isaac
Jeffrey Siegal
> It would be pretty easy to
> juggle the money around so that software development gets done
> with private money.
It would also be pretty easy to put strings on public money that say
what you must do with your software (or other IP) if you accept that
money, regardless of "which money" you happen to use.
That's not to say it would or wouldn't be a good policy, though. I lean
toward it for reasons related to the fundamental purpose of academic
institutions, but I don't have a real strong view on mandating it.
Isaac
>It would also be pretty easy to put strings on public money that say
>what you must do with your software (or other IP) if you accept that
>money, regardless of "which money" you happen to use.
>
>That's not to say it would or wouldn't be a good policy, though. I lean
>toward it for reasons related to the fundamental purpose of academic
>institutions, but I don't have a real strong view on mandating it.
I'd personally dislike it very strongly. If such policies would work
for IP, they'd certainly work equally well for other university
activities that I'd just as soon the government stay out of.
Isaac
Jeffrey Siegal
> I'd personally dislike it very strongly. If such policies would work
> for IP, they'd certainly work equally well for other university
> activities that I'd just as soon the government stay out of.
Are you suggesting that this isn't already done?
Isaac
No I'm not. But the example you picked, even though you may like the
result is particularly intrusive. It may not be worse than some
other thing I don't know about.
Isaac
Jeffrey Siegal
> No I'm not. But the example you picked, even though you may like the
> result is particularly intrusive.
You suggested that it would be a bad policy because it could spread to
other things. I would suggest that it is already in those "other
things" and if it were used to open up IP, it would be spreading *to*
that area, not from it.
If you don't like the idea of public money being used for coersion, then
really the only alternative (absent some kind of constitutional
amendement forbidding it) is for the institutions to not accept public
money. I don't know that I like that alternative either.
Isaac
>If you don't like the idea of public money being used for coersion, then
>really the only alternative (absent some kind of constitutional
>amendement forbidding it) is for the institutions to not accept public
>money. I don't know that I like that alternative either.
What really bothers me is when the coersion is used to enforce policy
that would be unconstitutional to enforce directly. Telling
schools what they should do with their IP certainly fits into that
category.
Most public universities don't have the choice not to accepting public
money. They can't exist without at least some state funds. They
are particularly vulnerable to the type of coersion you suggest, yet
as far as I can tell concerning North Carolina state universities,
no one tells the schools what they can and cannot do with their
patents and other IP. I really wouldn't want to see controls as
obtrusive as that. What are you aware of that approaches that
level?
Isaac
Jeffrey Siegal
> What really bothers me is when the coersion is used to enforce policy
> that would be unconstitutional to enforce directly. Telling
> schools what they should do with their IP certainly fits into that
> category.
Certainly not in the case of public schools. Governments can establish
whatever policies it wants for IP developed by their public schools,
independent of funding.
In the case of private schools, that would certainly be true.
> I really wouldn't want to see controls as
> obtrusive as that. What are you aware of that approaches that
> level?
I haven't looked closely, but as I understand it, some
antidiscrimination laws are applied to otherwise-private institutions
which accept public funds, and equal opportunity employment rules apply
to employers of all kinds enter into government contracts. There are
also numerous local requirements, such as the requirement in San
Francisco that contracting entities must provide "domestic partner"
benefits.
I'm not sure that requirements that non-profit academic institutions
(which, are, after all tax-advantaged institutions chartered to promote
education and to expand knowledge and understanding for the public
benefit) release their IP, rather than try to commercially exploit it,
would be any more intrusive than any of the others.
Certainly the the extent to which some universities have essentially
become commercial R&D labs for for-profit private corporations has
eroded the essential purpose of having academic institutions at all.
Tim Smith
>I wonder why the institution is uncomfortable with releasing the
>work themselves under the GPL. Doing so wouldn't compromise any of
>the rights they are holding onto by doing allowing the employee
>to release the work.
It sounds like they don't mind if the work exists in GPL'ed form, but
they simply don't want to be associated with it. One possible reason is
that they don't want to end up dealing with support. If your name is on
something, you will get support calls, despite disclaimers.
--Tim Smith
Isaac
>Certainly not in the case of public schools. Governments can establish
>whatever policies it wants for IP developed by their public schools,
>independent of funding.
You'd have no problem with the government interfering in what schools
choose to publish or not publish for example? Perhaps the school
has the authority to do so, but I'd find attempts to exercise such
control stifling and probably unconstitutional.
>I'm not sure that requirements that non-profit academic institutions
>(which, are, after all tax-advantaged institutions chartered to promote
>education and to expand knowledge and understanding for the public
>benefit) release their IP, rather than try to commercially exploit it,
>would be any more intrusive than any of the others.
I think we are going to have to disagree on this. While I would
applaud efforts by universities to release IP, I would find
government action to force such a release highly intrusive
and inappropriate. If government wants to offer money for the
purpose of developing technology for public use, that would
be a different thing entirely, but to have the government (and I
assume we mean the federal government here) completely dictate IP
policy based on giving some money would be IMO an end run
around the constitution.
Isaac
Jeffrey Siegal
> On Sun, 07 Jan 2001 16:58:04 -0800, Jeffrey Siegal <j...@quiotix.com> wrote:
>
> >Certainly not in the case of public schools. Governments can establish
> >whatever policies it wants for IP developed by their public schools,
> >independent of funding.
>
> You'd have no problem with the government interfering in what schools
> choose to publish or not publish for example?
Public schools? Certainly not. The schools *are* the government.
That's like saying the government can't tell itself what to publish.
> While I would
> applaud efforts by universities to release IP, I would find
> government action to force such a release highly intrusive
> and inappropriate.
Fair enough, but if they're go about developing commercial products,
they ought to at the very least lose their status as tax exempt
charities.
BTW, I didn't say I have no problem with this. I find the whole area
troubling, but I also find it troubling to see academic institutions
turned into for-profit enterprises, with faculty, in some cases, lining
up for leaves of absence to take their locked up academic work to get
rich in a startup. I find that *very* troubling, in fact.
Florian Weimer
> I wrote a very useful and robust Java library that I'd like to GPL.
> However, I wrote it as an employee of an educational institution. I've
> asked the educational institution to GPL it, but they don't want to.
>
> However, they said that I could take a copy of the program, strip out their
> copyright notices, and GPL it with me as the copyright owner. However, I
> don't know enough about copyrighting to know whether this is okay.
In the US (you are a US citizen, aren't you), the following disclaimer
is considered sufficient by the Free Software Foundation (it's
traditionally part of the copyright assignment process to the
FSF---but it can be used separately, of course):
| If you are employed to do programming (even at a university), or have
| made an agreement with your employer or school saying it owns programs
| you write, then you and we need a signed piece of paper from your
| employer disclaiming rights to the program.
|
| The disclaimer should be signed by a vice president or general manager
| of the company. If you can't get at them, anyone else authorized to
| license software produced there will do. Here is a sample wording:
|
| Digital Stimulation Corporation hereby disclaims all copyright interest
| in the changes and enhancements made by Hugh Heffner to the program
| "seduce", also including any future revisions of these changes and
| enhancements.
|
| Digital Stimulation Corporation affirms that it has no other
| intellectual property interest that would undermine this release, or
| the use of the Program, and will do nothing to undermine it in the
| future.
|
| <signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1987
| Ty Coon, President of Vice, Digital Stimulation Corp.
Lee Hollaar
>In the US (you are a US citizen, aren't you), the following disclaimer
>is considered sufficient by the Free Software Foundation (it's
>traditionally part of the copyright assignment process to the
>FSF---but it can be used separately, of course):
>
>| If you are employed to do programming (even at a university), or have
>| made an agreement with your employer or school saying it owns programs
>| you write, then you and we need a signed piece of paper from your
>| employer disclaiming rights to the program.
>|
>| The disclaimer should be signed by a vice president or general manager
>| of the company. If you can't get at them, anyone else authorized to
>| license software produced there will do. Here is a sample wording:
>|
>| Digital Stimulation Corporation hereby disclaims all copyright interest
>| in the changes and enhancements made by Hugh Heffner to the program
>| "seduce", also including any future revisions of these changes and
>| enhancements.
>|
>| Digital Stimulation Corporation affirms that it has no other
>| intellectual property interest that would undermine this release, or
>| the use of the Program, and will do nothing to undermine it in the
>| future.
>|
>| <signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1987
>| Ty Coon, President of Vice, Digital Stimulation Corp.
So, you are an employed programmer and have written a program. Arguably,
the such an act is within the scope of your employement, so the copyright
ownership initially vests with the employer as a work made for hire.
Now, the employer "disclaims all copyright interest" in the program.
Question: What is the state of the copyright for the program?
1. The company has given it to the programmer, who can then assign it to
the FSF.
2. The company has put it into the public domain by disclaiming the
copyright they own.
My guess for the answer is 2. 1 is wrong, because it is not a proper
assignment for a work made for hire, which must be signed by both
parties. See 17 USC 201(b).
Florian Weimer
> So, you are an employed programmer and have written a program. Arguably,
> the such an act is within the scope of your employement, so the copyright
> ownership initially vests with the employer as a work made for hire.
>
> Now, the employer "disclaims all copyright interest" in the program.
>
> Question: What is the state of the copyright for the program?
> 1. The company has given it to the programmer, who can then assign it to
> the FSF.
> 2. The company has put it into the public domain by disclaiming the
> copyright they own.
>
> My guess for the answer is 2. 1 is wrong, because it is not a proper
> assignment for a work made for hire, which must be signed by both
> parties. See 17 USC 201(b).
Wouldn't the programmer have some copyright claims as well, if some of
the work was done in his spare time (and the job contract doesn't say
the employer owns it anyway)?
I'm not familiar with the US copyright law, the German one is
different in a rather extraordinary way.
Barry Margolin
The OP said "I wrote it as an employee of the university", which I think
we've all interpreted to mean that he wrote it as part of his job duties.
This makes it a work for hire, and the employee doesn't have any personal
copyright in it, unless his employment contract has explicit language where
the employer gives up this right.
--
Barry Margolin, bar...@genuity.net
Genuity, Burlington, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.
cbbr...@hex.net
Isaac> On Sun, 07 Jan 2001 00:51:34 GMT, cbbr...@hex.net
>> It seems increasingly common for educational institutions to treat
>> things written there as being produced as "works for hire," where
>> the owner of copyright is actually the institution, not the author.
Isaac> The institution hasn't disclaimed their right to treat the work
Isaac> as a work for hire. It seems more like they are willing to
Isaac> share ownership with the employee at least as far as allowing
Isaac> the employee to release the work under the GPL. Still very
Isaac> interesting.
Isaac> I wonder why the institution is uncomfortable with releasing
Isaac> the work themselves under the GPL. Doing so wouldn't
Isaac> compromise any of the rights they are holding onto by doing
Isaac> allowing the employee to release the work.
Indeed. It seems peculiar that they are willing for the employee to
retain any rights whatsoever on the work.
Something clueless is probably going on here. I'll bet that if the
employee wanted to $ell licen$e$, for big BUCK$, the in$titution would
want to get their $hare of the proceed$.
But with no dollar signs in their eyes, they are seemingly strangely
forgetting a usual policy of treating the research results as being
institutional property.
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "ac.notelrac.teneerf@" "454aa"))
<http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/>
"MS apparently now has a team dedicated to tracking problems with
Linux and publicizing them. I guess eventually they'll figure out
this back fires... ;)" -- William Burrow <aa...@DELETE.fan.nb.ca>
Pat McCann
> >| If you are employed to do programming (even at a university), or have
> >| made an agreement with your employer or school saying it owns programs
> >| you write, then you and we need a signed piece of paper from your
> >| employer disclaiming rights to the program.
Note that this doesn't say "all rights".
> >| [...]Digital Stimulation Corporation hereby disclaims all copyright interest
> >| in the changes and enhancements made by Hugh Heffner to the program
> >| "seduce", also including any future revisions of these changes and
> >| enhancements.
'Funny it covers only changes made by HH, often a subset of the program.
But it's ambiguous about whether it covers future changes by anyone but HH.
> >| Digital Stimulation Corporation affirms that it has no other
> >| intellectual property interest that would undermine this release, or
> >| the use of the Program, and will do nothing to undermine it in the
> >| future.[...]
Ambiguous? What might "undermine this release [or use]" mean?
It might be just my biased, suspicious mind, but the above seems aimed
at maximizing the possibility the copyright owner will acceed to the
developer's use of the work and accepting of the small risk that
the owner will ever claim any rights retained or not transferred. This
might be reasonable, as long as the developer knows it's his risk, not
that of the author of his signed piece of paper.
As for slipping it into the public domain, that would probably be an
acceptable outcome, if it made the transfer more likely. I see PD works
going into GPLed works frequently. It wouldn't be a bad thing, except
that the PD work often disappears from the PD as far as anyone can tell.
Such is life in an acquisitive world. I wouldn't have it any other way,
except that I would expect people to have the decency to identify
sizable portions of their programs over which they had no creative input
and which should still be in the public domain from where they came.
Lee Hollaar
> I see PD works going into GPLed works frequently.
Pray, what does it mean for a public domain work "going into GPLed works"?
Are you saying that somebody is taking something in the public domain and
including it in a GPLed work? If so, big deal. You can do anything you
want with a work in the public domain as far as copyright is concerned,
because there is no owner with any rights.
Are you saying that somebody takes a work in the public domain (such as
one where the employer has disclaimed copyright) and is now making it
GPLed? In that case, anyone who wants to ignore the distribution requirements
of the GPL can, because there can never be an infringement from the
distribution of a work in the public domain.
Karl Ove Hufthammer
<93g2nc$sln$1...@coward.ks.cc.utah.edu>:
>Are you saying that somebody takes a work in the public domain (such
>as one where the employer has disclaimed copyright) and is now
>making it GPLed? In that case, anyone who wants to ignore the
>distribution requirements of the GPL can, because there can never be
>an infringement from the distribution of a work in the public
>domain.
No, they can't. The can use the PD version, and do anything they want
with it, but not the GPL version (if these are identical, code-wise).
Example: Someone improves the GPL version, perhaps adding a new
feature. This new version of the software is not in the public domain,
and you must abide the requirements of the GPL. On the other hand, you
*can* do whatever you want with the original public domain version
(which doesn't have this new feature/improvement).
--
Karl Ove Hufthammer
J J Simas
news:OTr66.40$UJ5.326@burlma1-snr2...
> In article <87wvc5d...@deneb.enyo.de>,
> Florian Weimer <f...@deneb.enyo.de> wrote:
> >hol...@faith.cs.utah.edu (Lee Hollaar) writes:
> >
> >> So, you are an employed programmer and have written a program.
Arguably,
> >> the such an act is within the scope of your employement, so the
copyright
> >> ownership initially vests with the employer as a work made for hire.
Right.
> >>
> >> Now, the employer "disclaims all copyright interest" in the program.
> >>
> >> Question: What is the state of the copyright for the program?
> >> 1. The company has given it to the programmer, who can then assign it
to
> >> the FSF.
> >> 2. The company has put it into the public domain by disclaiming the
> >> copyright they own.
> >>
> >> My guess for the answer is 2. 1 is wrong, because it is not a proper
> >> assignment for a work made for hire, which must be signed by both
> >> parties. See 17 USC 201(b).
> >
> >Wouldn't the programmer have some copyright claims as well, if some of
> >the work was done in his spare time (and the job contract doesn't say
> >the employer owns it anyway)?
>
> The OP said "I wrote it as an employee of the university", which I think
> we've all interpreted to mean that he wrote it as part of his job duties.
> This makes it a work for hire, and the employee doesn't have any personal
> copyright in it, unless his employment contract has explicit language
where
> the employer gives up this right.
Right about me having no copyright control initially. But can't the
employer say, one program two copies. Employer keeps copyright on first
copy. Employer gives copyright on second copy. ?
Karl Ove Hufthammer
>Are you saying that somebody takes a work in the public domain (such
>as one where the employer has disclaimed copyright) and is now
>making it GPLed? In that case, anyone who wants to ignore the
>distribution requirements of the GPL can, because there can never be
>an infringement from the distribution of a work in the public
>domain.
No, they can't. The can use the PD version, and do anything they want
with it, but not the GPL version (even if these are identical,
John Hasler
> I see PD works going into GPLed works frequently.
Please name some of them. I rarely see works of software that claim to be
in the public domain at all.
> It wouldn't be a bad thing, except that the PD work often disappears from
> the PD as far as anyone can tell.
So go back to the original source.
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin
Lee Hollaar
>hol...@faith.cs.utah.edu (Lee Hollaar) skreiv i meldinga
><93g2nc$sln$1...@coward.ks.cc.utah.edu>:
>
>>Are you saying that somebody takes a work in the public domain (such
>>as one where the employer has disclaimed copyright) and is now
>>making it GPLed? In that case, anyone who wants to ignore the
>>distribution requirements of the GPL can, because there can never be
>>an infringement from the distribution of a work in the public
>>domain.
>
>No, they can't. The can use the PD version, and do anything they want
>with it, but not the GPL version (even if these are identical,
>code-wise).
So, I take something that is identical to a public domain work (which
means that it is a public domain work, since you don't get a copyright
unless there is something original added). Somebody has tacked the
GPL license on it.
I ignore the license, because I don't wish to be bound by its terms.
Nobody can make me accept a license if I don't wish to.
I distribute the program. I haven't violated the license, because
I haven't agreed to it. I haven't infringed a copyright, because
what I copied and distributed is in the public domain.
> Example: Someone improves the GPL version, perhaps adding
>a new feature. This new version of the software is not in the public
>domain, and you must abide the requirements of the GPL. On the other
>hand, you *can* do whatever you want with the original public domain
>version (which doesn't have this new feature/improvement).
This is not an example of "even if these are identical, code-wise."
Of course, somebody can make a derivative work based on something
in the public domain, have a copyright in that derivative work, and
license that copyright as he sees fit.
cbbr...@hex.net
Jeffrey> Isaac wrote:
>> On Sun, 07 Jan 2001 16:58:04 -0800, Jeffrey Siegal
>> <j...@quiotix.com> wrote:
>>> Certainly not in the case of public schools. Governments can
>>> establish whatever policies it wants for IP developed by their
>>> public schools, independent of funding.
>> You'd have no problem with the government interfering in what
>> schools choose to publish or not publish for example?
Jeffrey> Public schools? Certainly not. The schools *are* the
Jeffrey> government. That's like saying the government can't tell
Jeffrey> itself what to publish.
Indeed.
>> While I would applaud efforts by universities to release IP, I
>> would find government action to force such a release highly
>> intrusive and inappropriate.
Jeffrey> Fair enough, but if they're go about developing commercial
Jeffrey> products, they ought to at the very least lose their status
Jeffrey> as tax exempt charities.
Quite. If they're going to play the "I'm a charity and deserve public
funding," then I would not think it outrageous to expect that the
results of that _public funding_ enter the _public domain_.
That's further than I would realistically _hope_ for things to go, but
certainly the present situation, where the government funding is
basically getting thinly funneled into proprietary uses, and where
education has the risk of itself becoming wholely proprietary.
Jeffrey> BTW, I didn't say I have no problem with this. I find the
Jeffrey> whole area troubling, but I also find it troubling to see
Jeffrey> academic institutions turned into for-profit enterprises,
Jeffrey> with faculty, in some cases, lining up for leaves of absence
Jeffrey> to take their locked up academic work to get rich in a
Jeffrey> startup. I find that *very* troubling, in fact.
It represents, conceptually, a return to feudalism, where the peasants
are subject to the requirements of the barons, having to pay the
barons rent on the land they work, and with no chance of ever owning
land of their own.
Throw in a goodly dosage of the "guild" system, where, to attain
knowledge, you have to pay into the guild to take courses, and are
forbidden on the pain of lawsuit to reveal that which you have learned
from the guild.
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "ac.notelrac.teneerf@" "454aa"))
<http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/>
"KDE isn't a window manager. It *includes* one, but kwm is only one
of *many* components of KDE. And kwm is an *optional* component.
GNOME is the same, except that it doesn't include a wm..."
-- cbbr...@hex.net
John Hasler
> You can do anything you want with a work in the public domain as far as
> copyright is concerned, because there is no owner with any rights.
Not quite. You are not supposed to claim to be the author (which is not to
say that you must say who is).
> In that case, anyone who wants to ignore the distribution requirements of
> the GPL can, because there can never be an infringement from the
> distribution of a work in the public domain.
To be specific, Mr. McCann is free distribute such a work under whatever
terms he chooses.
Lee Hollaar
>Lee Hollaar writes:
>> You can do anything you want with a work in the public domain as far as
>> copyright is concerned, because there is no owner with any rights.
>
>Not quite. You are not supposed to claim to be the author (which is not to
>say that you must say who is).
Maybe that would be the unfair trade practice of passing off. But unless
you put a false copyright notice on it, it would not be a copyright
violation.
>> In that case, anyone who wants to ignore the distribution requirements of
>> the GPL can, because there can never be an infringement from the
>> distribution of a work in the public domain.
>
>To be specific, Mr. McCann is free distribute such a work under whatever
>terms he chooses.
And if one somehow gets a copy without agreeing to those terms, they
can do whatever they want as long as it doesn't violate copyright or
some other law.
John Hasler
> Not quite. You are not supposed to claim to be the author (which is not
> to say that you must say who is).
Lee Hollaar writes:
> Maybe that would be the unfair trade practice of passing off. But unless
> you put a false copyright notice on it, it would not be a copyright
> violation.
The statute refers to "a notice of copyright or words of the same purport".
Copyright being automatic, it seems to me that a claim of authorship has
the same purport as a copyright notice.
I wrote:
> To be specific, Mr. McCann is free distribute such a work under whatever
> terms he chooses.
Lee Hollaar writes:
> And if one somehow gets a copy without agreeing to those terms, they can
> do whatever they want as long as it doesn't violate copyright or some
> other law.
But those would seem to be exactly the terms under which Mr. McCann wants
to distribute the stuff. So why not just do so?
Florian Weimer
> Pat McCann writes:
> > I see PD works going into GPLed works frequently.
>
> Please name some of them.
Isn't GNU tar based on public-domain software?
For small to medium-sized changes, the FSF asks the author to put it
into the public domain, which then gets incorporated into the GPLed
version copyrighted by the FSF.
Florian Weimer
> > >| Digital Stimulation Corporation affirms that it has no other
> > >| intellectual property interest that would undermine this release, or
> > >| the use of the Program, and will do nothing to undermine it in the
> > >| future.[...]
>
> Ambiguous? What might "undermine this release [or use]" mean?
I think this paragraph refers to the possibility of present or future
patents granted to Digital Stimulation Corporation.
Isaac
>John Hasler <jo...@dhh.gt.org> writes:
>
>> Pat McCann writes:
>> > I see PD works going into GPLed works frequently.
>>
>> Please name some of them.
>
>Isn't GNU tar based on public-domain software?
I'm sure that it does. I remember looking at pdtar a decade or
so and seeing clearly that it incorporated nearly wholesale into
gnu tar. I was puzzled by that at the time, but I came to the
conclusion that nothing bad had happened.
I'm sure that they've made enough changes by now to make the
complete package a derivative work in which they hold can hold
a copyright. Perhaps there are still some individual files
which are the public domain program with only minor edits, but
obviously no one is really interested in finding this out.
>For small to medium-sized changes, the FSF asks the author to put it
Isaac
Florian Weimer
[GNU tar vs. pdtar]
> I'm sure that they've made enough changes by now to make the
> complete package a derivative work in which they hold can hold
> a copyright. Perhaps there are still some individual files
> which are the public domain program with only minor edits, but
> obviously no one is really interested in finding this out.
Hmm, it seems as if RMS is interested. He posted a request for
ancient versions of GNU tar a while ago.
John Hasler
> Isn't GNU tar based on public-domain software?
The Gnu tar copyright file says in part:
GNU tar, heavily based on John Gilmore's public domain version of tar,
The oldest entry in the date in the AUTHORS file is 1993. I don't doubt
that PD works do get incorporated into GPL ones from time to time.
However, Mr. McCann wrote that he sees it frequently, so there should be
many recent examples. I rather doubt this, because I don't see many
examples of PD software at all.
> For small to medium-sized changes, the FSF asks the author to put it into
> the public domain,...
That hardly counts as "PD works going into GPLed works".
> ...which then gets incorporated into the GPLed version copyrighted by the
> FSF.
The change itself, however, remains available for unlimited use.
Barry Margolin
J J Simas <jjs...@acm.org> wrote:
>"Barry Margolin" <bar...@genuity.net> wrote in message
>news:OTr66.40$UJ5.326@burlma1-snr2...
>> In article <87wvc5d...@deneb.enyo.de>,
>> Florian Weimer <f...@deneb.enyo.de> wrote:
>> >Wouldn't the programmer have some copyright claims as well, if some of
>> >the work was done in his spare time (and the job contract doesn't say
>> >the employer owns it anyway)?
>>
>> The OP said "I wrote it as an employee of the university", which I think
>> we've all interpreted to mean that he wrote it as part of his job duties.
>> This makes it a work for hire, and the employee doesn't have any personal
>> copyright in it, unless his employment contract has explicit language
>where
>> the employer gives up this right.
>
>Right about me having no copyright control initially. But can't the
>employer say, one program two copies. Employer keeps copyright on first
>copy. Employer gives copyright on second copy. ?
Yes, the employer can do this. I was responding to the paragraph quoted
above that implied that the programmer automatically had some copyright
claims. If the employer doesn't explicitly give this to the programmer, he
doesn't get it.
Pat McCann
> Right about me having no copyright control initially. But can't the
> employer say, one program two copies. Employer keeps copyright on first
> copy. Employer gives copyright on second copy. ?
No. Think of it this way: "Program" is ambiguous. You fixed many
(intangible, of course) ideas in a (tangible, of course) medium,
forming the first tangible copy which is an expression of those ideas.
(An expression is usually considered a tangible, almost by definition,
but it is sometime helpful to pretend that there is just one intangible
expression fixed in one or more tangible copies.)
Copyright law allows the owner to control certain rights in that
expression and all copies of it. An owner can't "keep" copyright on one
and "give" copyright on another. He can, however, license the rights in
copies differently. But they need to be consistent to be useful. You
can't say "everyone can do what they want with this copy but nobody can
do anything with this copy. You can say it, but it is not useful. It
gets more complicated (beyond my ken) when there are multiple owners
doing multiple licensing.
If you make a new expression which contains the old expression, you
share ownership with the old owner and need to consider him when
licensing your expression. Or, if the changes are not significant
(court's choice), you don't get copyright in the new expression. (I
guess the old owner gets it. I suppose the PD gets the delta.)
Pat McCann
> Pat McCann writes:
> > I see PD works going into GPLed works frequently.
>
> Please name some of them. I rarely see works of software that claim to be
> in the public domain at all.
Can you see my red face? I exaggerated terribly. I guess in my mindset
I was considering once as too frequently. You're quite right that
software is "infrequently" released to the PD at all. The only example
I can name is the GRASS (GIS software) out of CMU. I only suppose that
some other works out of CMU and other U.s that have historically PD'd
their work have been used in GPL'd works. I may have been thinking of
several BSD/X11/Mit-type projects that have or have been thinking of
going GPL (wxWindows, ivtools, berlin), but that's much different.
IIRC, there was some labeled PD in the Linux kernel a few years ago.
The only thing I see with that label now says "This file was written by
someone, somewhere, sometime And is released into the Public Domain" and
THAT probably wasn't PD.
I'll also note last weeks kernel list messages about employees of NSA
(who's work would be in the PD) writing driver and security code for
the kernel. (That's what it said. They are likely to be contractors.)
> > It wouldn't be a bad thing, except that the PD work often disappears from
> > the PD as far as anyone can tell.
>
> So go back to the original source.
Hard to do if it's on a NSA disk or destroyed or just lost.
I've seen another discussion of PD where people say that if, say,
you owned the only copy of a great work of art in the PD, you
should be required by law to allow access (free, at cost, more?)
to that work. Museums worry about this.
Pat McCann
> In article <ok8zokc...@localhost.localdomain> Pat McCann <thi...@bboogguusss.org> writes:
> > I see PD works going into GPLed works frequently.
>
> Pray, what does it mean for a public domain work "going into GPLed works"?
>
> Are you saying that somebody is taking something in the public domain and
> including it in a GPLed work? If so, big deal. You can do anything you
> want with a work in the public domain as far as copyright is concerned,
> because there is no owner with any rights.
It means a GPL licensor incorporating a work or significant part of a
work from the public domain in the GPLed work. It means that the part
of the derivative work which is from the PD is still in the PD.
Depending upon the licensor's words, it may mean that he is pretending
or claiming to have written something he didn't write and to be
copyrighting something which he has no standing to copyright. It's all
quite legal. Yes, he has the right to copyright the derivative as a
whole -- as a compilation. But if someone copies the PD part, the
licensor better not try sueing over it if the suee can prove it's from
the PD. Eh, there's the rub. Does the licensor leave out notice of
the PD section in an effort to hoodwink licensees? That's not nice.
I'm not focusing on legalities here, folks. I was addressing the
"moral right" to attribution and plagiarism and the decency to let
others know which parts of your work are not under copyright protection.
If you get benefit from the PD, maybe you (morally/ethically) owe the
public some consideration (like seeing that the work remain in the PD
and not get "lost"). It's not always practical and there is a kind of
fair use here too, but software developers should consider these things
when using works from the PD.
See my apology for "frequently [quoted above]" elsewhere.
Isaac
Yes. I remember wondering at the time if there was some a
copyright related issue involved or if the interest was academic.
It could be that there was an issue concerning a claim that a
third party's implementation of tar was based on pdtar rather
than gnutar.
Isaac
Russ Allbery
> Pat McCann writes:
>> I see PD works going into GPLed works frequently.
> Please name some of them.
The original getdate.y.
> I rarely see works of software that claim to be in the public domain at
> all.
dmalloc. Many hash algorithms. Several snprintf implementations. Most
public domain software isn't completely software packages, but rather is
code snippets that implement some common task completely and well and
which the author is offering to all comers in an attempt to improve the
general state of the art.
For similar reasons, the various replacements for missing system functions
and the error handling and memory allocation wrappers that I wrote for INN
are all in the public domain.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
cbbr...@hex.net
Florian Weimer
> Quite. If they're going to play the "I'm a charity and deserve public
> funding," then I would not think it outrageous to expect that the
> results of that _public funding_ enter the _public domain_.
This is certainly a good think, but IMHO, the work shouldn't enter the
public domain, but it should be released under a license which ensures
that it remains free software. Otherwise, a spinoff company takes the
sources and makes a proprietary product of it, and hardly anything is
gained. (Of course, someone could improve the public domain version,
but there are enough possibilities to make this infeasible.)
Jay Maynard
>This is certainly a good think, but IMHO, the work shouldn't enter the
>public domain, but it should be released under a license which ensures
>that it remains free software. Otherwise, a spinoff company takes the
>sources and makes a proprietary product of it, and hardly anything is
>gained. (Of course, someone could improve the public domain version,
>but there are enough possibilities to make this infeasible.)
ARGH!!!!!
Dammit, stuff in the public domain *IS* and *ALWAYS WILL BE* free.
If a spinoff company takes it and makes a proprietary product based on it,
they *CANNOT* stop *ANYONE* from distributing or working on the original
public domain version. If it bothers you that much, then *YOU* take the
original version and enhance it. Put your code where your mouth is.
This kind of thinking - if it's not GPVed, it's not free - is what
infuriates me about GPV zealots. Their utopia is only free for people of
like mind; those of us who understand that freedom must necessarily include
the freedom to do things that piss you off - like, say, make money - know
better.
If my tax dollars paid for it, then it should be available for me to do with
as I wish, including profit from my work in making it better.
cbbr...@hex.net
It's obviously _so_ infeasible that the software being maintained
under BSD-related licenses are all fictional figments of peoples'
imaginations, right?
If you're running XFree86 on any of your systems, then it's manifestly
obvious that what you've just said is _NONSENSE_.
I would rather think that the government's responsibility would be to
release their software in a free form, of which "public domain"
happens to be one of the most usable forms conceivable.
Mandating the GPL on _ALL_ such software would not be politically
feasible, and is not particularly necessary, as you're free to take
something that's PD, and fork a GPLed branch, if you so desire.
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.gultn@" "enworbbc"))
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/xwindows.html
When aiming for the common denominator, be prepared for the occasional
division by zero.
eric dahlman
> If my tax dollars paid for it, then it should be available for me to do with
> as I wish, including profit from my work in making it better.
One point that I though ought to be made here is that this is not
always a fair argument. Now before I get trashed for this let me say
that I am a university researcher who has been supported by government
grants in the past. As a matter of personal choice we do release
everything worth releasing under the GPL. If it isn't worth releasing
you can still get at it, if someone wanted to be a stickler about it
you can even get my email through a FOIA request.
The problem with the above remark is that everything is not paid for
by taxes even when research is being done on a government grant. The
researches and the institution are not paid a truly fair rate for what
they are doing, instead they are paid at a reduced rate with the
understanding that they can reap the potential commercial benefits of
their work. Most research does not result in some wonderful new
patent or program that can be turned into huge profits but when
averaged across the whole institution the few hits that are made help
to keep the lights on.
Now I suspect that if you as a tax payer were willing to pay full
price for the research done on your behalf the research institutions
which are doing that work would be willing to sign over all the rights
to the public domain. But we all know that will never happen, so the
right to commercialize a discovery is given to the researchers as
partial payment for their efforts. Now for some of us this is a
suckers deal, take myself as an example, my research will most likely
never be successfully comercialized. I like what I do so I am willing
to accept the loss but if I was motivated more by money I'd be doing
research in a different area with better commercial promise. For that
matter I could go directly into industry and collect 70% pay raise.
I guess that I had best cut this rant off, my caffeine level is
dropping.
-Eric
John Hasler
> I would rather think that the government's responsibility would be to
> release their software in a free form, of which "public domain" happens
> to be one of the most usable forms conceivable.
It would, however, be necessary to make sure that they actually do release
it, to prevent BRLCAD situations.
> Mandating the GPL on _ALL_ such software would not be politically feasible,
> and is not particularly necessary, as you're free to take something
> that's PD, and fork a GPLed branch, if you so desire.
Yes. All you would have to do is watch for new Government releases and
immediately repackage each one under the GPL.
Stefaan A Eeckels
jmay...@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) writes:
> On 22 Jan 2001 08:26:04 +0100, Florian Weimer <f...@deneb.enyo.de> wrote:
>>This is certainly a good think, but IMHO, the work shouldn't enter the
>>public domain, but it should be released under a license which ensures
>>that it remains free software. Otherwise, a spinoff company takes the
>>sources and makes a proprietary product of it, and hardly anything is
>>gained. (Of course, someone could improve the public domain version,
>>but there are enough possibilities to make this infeasible.)
>
> ARGH!!!!!
>
> Dammit, stuff in the public domain *IS* and *ALWAYS WILL BE* free.
One should realize that the notion "freedom" to Europeans is always
ambivalent. European countries, and to a large extend Europeans, see
freedom as a kind of benevolent dictatorship, protecting people from
their own mistakes, forcing them to do the "sane" thing, indoctrinating
them through media funded by the state to guarantee their survival,
but (as Jerry Pournelle would say "alas") not their independence, etc...
Did you know that Belgium requires, by law, homeowners to take out
fire insurance, but that building standards don't require fire
detectors?
> If a spinoff company takes it and makes a proprietary product based on it,
> they *CANNOT* stop *ANYONE* from distributing or working on the original
> public domain version. If it bothers you that much, then *YOU* take the
> original version and enhance it. Put your code where your mouth is.
>
> This kind of thinking - if it's not GPVed, it's not free - is what
> infuriates me about GPV zealots. Their utopia is only free for people of
> like mind; those of us who understand that freedom must necessarily include
> the freedom to do things that piss you off - like, say, make money - know
> better.
I hate to repeat myself, but your GPV zealotry will not convince
GPL zealots to change their mind, as they can too easily dismiss
your arguments as unreasonable.
It's unlikely that Florian is a zealot. Your ranting might make
him one.
> If my tax dollars paid for it, then it should be available for me to do with
> as I wish, including profit from my work in making it better.
Doesn't your government as a rule require that software developed
under Federal funding be placed in the Public Domain?
--
Stefaan
--
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
Lee Hollaar
><93g2nc$sln$1...@coward.ks.cc.utah.edu>:
>
>>Are you saying that somebody takes a work in the public domain (such
>>as one where the employer has disclaimed copyright) and is now
>>making it GPLed? In that case, anyone who wants to ignore the
>>distribution requirements of the GPL can, because there can never be
>>an infringement from the distribution of a work in the public
>>domain.
>
>No, they can't. The can use the PD version, and do anything they want
>with it, but not the GPL version (even if these are identical,
>code-wise).
We are talking about when the "versions" are identical. If they are
different, of course the creator of the changes can license the
copyright on those changes any way he or she wishes.
> Example: Someone improves the GPL version, perhaps adding
>a new feature. This new version of the software is not in the public
>domain, and you must abide the requirements of the GPL. On the other
>hand, you *can* do whatever you want with the original public domain
>version (which doesn't have this new feature/improvement).
Completely true, but adds nothing to the discussion of whether, if
somebody distributes a public domain work (or a work identical to
one in the public domain) with a GPL slapped on it, the GPL can be
ignored.
I say it can, because one does not need the protection against suit
that is the GPL to use, modify, or distribute something that is in
the public domain. And, unlike shrink- and click-wrap licenses, one
does not have to agree to the GPL to get the work or even use it.
Jeffrey Siegal
> The
> researches and the institution are not paid a truly fair rate for what
> they are doing, instead they are paid at a reduced rate with the
> understanding that they can reap the potential commercial benefits of
> their work.
That kind of behind the scenes sweatheart deal should not be allowed.
If the researchers and the institution are being given something of
value by the taxpayers, that transaction should be transparently bid for
and budgeted.
How can can taxpayers ever be sure researchers with such deals are not
ripping us off because they happen to be friends with the contracting
officer (who may well go to work with them after he leaves his
government job)?
John Hasler
> ...Europeans, see freedom as a kind of benevolent dictatorship,...
Please take your political rants elsewhwere.
> Doesn't your government as a rule require that software developed under
> Federal funding be placed in the Public Domain?
No. US law forbids the US Federal government to use US copyright law to
enforce its copyright on works authored by its employees as part of their
duties.
John Hasler
> Example: Someone improves the GPL version, perhaps adding a new
> feature. This new version of the software is not in the public domain,
> and you must abide the requirements of the GPL. On the other hand, you
> *can* do whatever you want with the original public domain version (which
> doesn't have this new feature/improvement).
You can also take the GPL version, snip out the public domain portions, and
do whatever you want with them. The GPL applies to the
features/improvements and to the derivative as a whole, not to the portions
of original public domain work that are embedded in the derivative.
Pat McCann
> jmay...@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) writes:
>
> > If my tax dollars paid for it, then it should be available for me to do with
> > as I wish, including profit from my work in making it better.
>
> One point that I though ought to be made here is that this is not
> always a fair argument. Now before I get trashed for this let me say
> that I am a university researcher who has been supported by government
> grants in the past. As a matter of personal choice we do release
> everything worth releasing under the GPL. If it isn't worth releasing
> you can still get at it, if someone wanted to be a stickler about it
> you can even get my email through a FOIA request.
I've snipped the part where I think you're saying that Jay's argument is
not fair because it doesn't apply (to your situation). You didn't
convince me mostly because the payment scheme that you seem to think is
is in place there is one that has no standing. It shouldn't exist. We
needn't acknowledge it's existenance except when trying to root such
corruption out of our culture. Looks like we just disagree on the
subject and there is little reason for discussion.
But I really only meant to responded to your words quoted above. You
seemed to have your GNU blinders on and totally missed the part of
Jay's quote about "to do with as I wish". You seem to be saying
"I almost always let you do with it as you wish - I license it under
the GPL". I see this kind of loose-with-the-facts implication often.
Do please tell us that isn't what you meant. You don't really believe
that you're not deserving of a trashing by Jay because of your
disclaimer, do you? So why did you say what you said? Do you have
some misbegotten concept in your mind that the GPL lets Jay do with
"your" software what he wishes? Or where did I go wrong in reading
your disclaimer that way? (Let's assume it should be "your" software
as you desire and think justified and not "ours" as Jay and I desire.)
Pat McCann
> No. US law forbids the US Federal government to use US copyright law to
> enforce its copyright on works authored by its employees as part of their
> duties.
###########
Sect. 105. Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works
Copyright protection under this title [17 USCS Sects. 101 et seq.] is
not available for any work of the United States Government, but the
United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding
copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.
###########
So the work-around, is to simply hire companies or, often, organizations
set up just for the purpose (more precisely, the purpose of enriching
someone's friend or future employer) of doing the work of the USG. A
little twist of the statute interpretation knob and, vavoom, it's no
longer a work of the USG and the people that are paid to create the work
get to keep title to it and the people who paid for it get to hope it
carries a generous license. Course, it's justified as just a part of
the bargain made, like our University researcher just suggested, and
it's hard to argue that that point is wrong in most cases. But it sure
smells wrong.
There was a recent case of this that suprisingly got turned around
somehow. NASA let some organization own Hubble pics and they slapped
some hokey license on it which forbade its use in "religious materials",
"gang related materials", and other horrors of our culture. I see now
that it has been changed (per some aledged but unstated NASA policy)
to be treated "AS IF in the public domain" (my paraphrase).
Pat McCann
> In article <598962A1BDCF468A.921A67C8...@lp.airnews.net>,
> jmay...@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) writes:
> >
> > ARGH!!!!!
> >
> > Dammit, stuff in the public domain *IS* and *ALWAYS WILL BE* free.
>
> One should realize that the notion "freedom" to Europeans is always
> ambivalent. [.....]
That may be, but I think the more important problem here is an
ambivalence in the word "stuff" and in the more often seen "software"
and "program".
Some tend to think, not unnaturally (as software developers), of the
software as a living entity with an identity which exists from
conception (if not aborted) throughout all its derivative. This has
some backing by law in that copyrights in the original follow all
derivatives (if not tranferred away). (Some even like to pretend that it
is the software that has rights, but that's a different discussion.)
Others tend to think of the software as the one particular expression of
ideas that is in front of them. In the usual case, there is only one
thing that is being licensed and one work that may be copyrighted.
That's all that really counts. Even derivative works are individual
works in their own right possibly under their own copyrights with
their own license.
So we're often talking past each other. If I take a non-proprietary
program (ie, one in the public domain) or even a proprietary program
under an X11-type license and make it part of a proprietary program
under the more restrictive GPL, the first group will say that I've
affected the status of "the software" (now it is less free or more
free, depending upon what the meaning of the word "is^h^hfree" is).
The second group will say that the status of "the software" hasn't
changed a bit. I've created a new, if derivative, work with it's
own status, licensing, etc. I can't affect the original software
that I was licensed (or given) to use.
That seems so obvious that I'm almost ashamed to bother stating it.
Both sides are right, if they use their concepts in properly in the
proper context. But it seems to me that the first concept is much more
easily (and, in fact, more often) abused to promote an argument or
philosophy. It is a concept that should not be used without
explanation. People too often make assumptions from it's use that they
shouldn't. The second concept is usually self-evident, but it could use
more explanation too since one shouldn't assume the reader will see the
self-evidence if it's there at all.
Pat McCann
> [...] And, unlike shrink- and click-wrap licenses, one
> does not have to agree to the GPL to get the work or even use it.
As long as you don't do anything with it except run your copy
and do only copying as necessary for running, backup, etc.
And a few other things not important to many people.
Some claim you can also make derivative works as long as you
don't distribute them very widely (or something like that),
but the law gives exlusive right to proprietary software owners "to
prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work", and I
I've never seen (or don't remember) a convincing explanation of
any loophole in that.
eric dahlman
> eric dahlman wrote:
> > The
> > researches and the institution are not paid a truly fair rate for what
> > they are doing, instead they are paid at a reduced rate with the
> > understanding that they can reap the potential commercial benefits of
> > their work.
>
> That kind of behind the scenes sweatheart deal should not be allowed.
> If the researchers and the institution are being given something of
> value by the taxpayers, that transaction should be transparently bid for
> and budgeted.
There is nothing behind the scenes about it and it certainly is not a
sweetheart deal. Look at it this way there are two things which
result from research one is the actual result and the other is the
right to copyright works or patents or whatever that may be generated
along the way. Just because you pay for one does not mean that you
pay for the other.
Now when allocating funding the government is primarily interested in
the advancement science (O.K. there is lots of politics but that is
the ideal). Now assume that one scientist + lab costs $100 where the
government gets to own everything discovered. If they could instead
fund two scientists and labs for $50 each twice the work would get
done. They way the do this is by basically giving the scientists $50
+ a lottery ticket and the scientist hopes they have a winner.
That is really unfair to the scientist in my example since most are
motivated by other reasons than pure economics. However, it is
important to the university that gets a significant slice of the
winnings if the ticket hits. They can charge the government 80% of
their costs of running the lab and have the remaining 20% made up in
the long run by the few winners in the pile.
There is no magic or deception here. There is an inherent risk in
research, you may not find anything useful. This is actually the norm
the great discoveries are few and far between. The government is
actually taking the route which makes the most sense here as they has
pushed all of the risk off on to the researchers. In order to pay the
bills in a situation where there was not the potential for the
research institutions to make something off of the work the government
would have to pay full price. This would make the research
institutions happy, since they would not have to accept the risks
involved. The problem with this though is that then there would be
1000s of patents for _turnip twaddlers_[1] in the public domain that
the tax payers would have effectively paid to license.
This is the same situation faced on a smaller scale by consultants and
programmers. Do you own your code or does your company. In the case
of an employ you generally do not and as a consultant if you write
your contracts right you do. The consultant may bid low on a job
knowing that they can make up the loss reusing their code on later
jobs, they are assuming the risk that it will in fact be useful. If
the company requires that they own the results then the bid will
necessarily be higher since that opportunity does not exist.
The big problem is that people generally want to cherry pick these
things after the fact to avoid the risk.
>
> How can can taxpayers ever be sure researchers with such deals are
> not ripping us off because they happen to be friends with the
> contracting officer (who may well go to work with them after he
> leaves his government job)?
This just does not make sense because if there is a guaranteed payoff
for the researcher then it is not research, you know where you are
going. If it just my friend Bob giving me a bloated grant for nothing
that is just good old fashioned pork and graft, nothing new and totally
orthogonal the question of who owns the work.
-Eric
Footnotes:
[1] Even though Opus bought cases of these I don't think there is a real
market for the things.
Jeffrey Siegal
> Look at it this way there are two things which
> result from research one is the actual result and the other is the
> right to copyright works or patents or whatever that may be generated
> along the way. Just because you pay for one does not mean that you
> pay for the other.
Your attempt to separate the results from the IP is nonsensical. When
one does research, the result is knowledge, period. Some of that
knowledge is protectable, and becomes IP, while some is not, and
therefore necessarily enters the public domain (unless it is kept
secret).
Saying that you get to keep some of the IP releasing some of it is like
a situation where the government pays you to build a building, but you
get the keep part of the building and rent it out yourself. These kinds
of public/private partnerships, exist, frequently in areas such as
sports stadiums. But they're cesspools of graft and corruption frought
with sweatheart deals.
That's not saying that *your* research deals are corrupt, but when
mixing public and private business, the hazard is always there. If
there is a need for publicly funded research (and I think there is), it
is far better to just include the full cost of the research in the
budget, justify it to the public, and then have the public receive the
full benefit from the outcome. Will this cost the public more?
Probably. So what? Allegedly research grants are to provide some
public benefit. Releasing the results to the public domain means that
the public benefits more. The value of that IP does not disappear; you
just don't get to keep it.
Development of privately owned IP is easily financed with private risk
capital. There is no need for government money to do that, and no
public to granting public money to develop IP. This is especially true
for patents, where the invention must be publicly disclosed regardless.
If the research is privately funded, a private entity gets the patent
and the public gets the disclosure. With public funding, a private
entity gets the patent and the public gets the disclosure. What the
hell did the public pay for?
eric dahlman
> eric dahlman <dah...@cs.colostate.edu> writes:
>
> > jmay...@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) writes:
> >
> > > If my tax dollars paid for it, then it should be available for me to do with
> > > as I wish, including profit from my work in making it better.
> >
> > One point that I though ought to be made here is that this is not
> > always a fair argument. Now before I get trashed for this let me say
> > that I am a university researcher who has been supported by government
> > grants in the past. As a matter of personal choice we do release
> > everything worth releasing under the GPL. If it isn't worth releasing
> > you can still get at it, if someone wanted to be a stickler about it
> > you can even get my email through a FOIA request.
>
> I've snipped the part where I think you're saying that Jay's argument is
> not fair because it doesn't apply (to your situation). You didn't
> convince me mostly because the payment scheme that you seem to think is
> is in place there is one that has no standing. It shouldn't exist. We
> needn't acknowledge it's existenance except when trying to root such
> corruption out of our culture. Looks like we just disagree on the
> subject and there is little reason for discussion.
I am really interested in the reason you see this as corrupt. There
is a process which results in two products A and B, in this case
knowledge and licensing rights.[1] You cannot make one without the
other. One could say that IP is the waste product of the search for
knowledge. Now the government when supporting research
is primarily interested in A and lets say it costs $100 dollars to
make A. What is going on is that the government says "We'll pay you
$50 to make A." This is only acceptable if you get to keep B and sell
it for at least $50 since it is still going to cost you $100 to make A
regardless of what you get paid by the government. This is a big win
for the tax payer since they get the A they wanted for *half price*!!!
This is the same thing as a construction company who underbids a job
digging tunnels because they will get the "free" fill dirt they can
use for building roads. This is a win for everyone since the tunnel
and road are built cheaper, no fill dirt need be bought and no waste
dirt disposed of.
As for it being secret and unacknowledged that is not true by any
stretch of the imagination. It is all spelled out in the grants and
the contracts involved. If you think that all work funded by
government grants should be placed in the public domain that is fine
by me. All they have to do is pay the actual cost and they can have
everything. This is usually what businesses do when they pay for
research since they are actually interested in the IP generated and
not the knowledge itself.[2]
>
> But I really only meant to responded to your words quoted above. You
> seemed to have your GNU blinders on and totally missed the part of
> Jay's quote about "to do with as I wish". You seem to be saying
> "I almost always let you do with it as you wish - I license it under
> the GPL". I see this kind of loose-with-the-facts implication often.
>
> Do please tell us that isn't what you meant. You don't really believe
> that you're not deserving of a trashing by Jay because of your
> disclaimer, do you? So why did you say what you said? Do you have
> some misbegotten concept in your mind that the GPL lets Jay do with
> "your" software what he wishes? Or where did I go wrong in reading
> your disclaimer that way? (Let's assume it should be "your" software
> as you desire and think justified and not "ours" as Jay and I desire.)
GNU blinders, not I. The GPL is used precisely because it is NOT FREE
for you and Jay. As I mentioned above I am paid to create two things
new knowledge and IP. Now the "knowledge" I create has been bought
and paid for it is now free for all to see and use, you can read a
paper or the code and say "O.K. That is how that works." Then go off
and make use of the knowledge however you please modulo patent issues.
(I don't want a patent war I have made no statement beyond that they
exist.) Now the IP in general has not been paid for and is still 50%
mine (the university gets 50%). By electing to use the GPL I am able
to prevent paying customers from just using my GPL'ed code. This
makes the bean counters happy since we can still license to yourself
or Jay at a rate which we both agree on.
Gotta go to bed,
-Eric
Footnotes:
[1] It may be an urban legend but I remember hearing that Grapenuts
(sp?) was originally a waste product from the manufacture of another
cereal. So it may be that selling Grapenuts allows for cheeper Froot
Loops.
[2] As an aside I have worked on a project that was a corporate grant and
then they bought both the knowledge and the IP. It is just that the
government does not often pay for the IP and they write that fact into
their grants.
Jeffrey Siegal
> I am really interested in the reason you see this as corrupt. There
> is a process which results in two products A and B, in this case
> knowledge and licensing rights.[1]
Because there is no transparency in the separates values of A and B.
Fair public contracting requires transparency, because the people paying
the bill (i.e. the people) are not able to negotiate freely as would be
the case in a private transaction.
An example: The government contracts you to develop both A and B
(because the two can't be developed separately). For the moment, I'll
grant your premise that the government only wants A. The full cost to
develop is $X, the government only pays you $Y, but you get to keep B.
How is the public to know that the value of B is, in fact, $X-$Y and not
something much more? It can't. That's why these kinds of
public/private partnerships are inherently suceptible to abuse and
should not be allowed (and arguably are not allowed under laws which
require transparency in public spending).
Stefaan A Eeckels
John Hasler <jo...@dhh.gt.org> writes:
> Stefaan writes:
>> ...Europeans, see freedom as a kind of benevolent dictatorship,...
>
> Please take your political rants elsewhwere.
One runs out of ideas trying to get Jay to stop his
"GPV" nonsense, and calling all and sundry a zealot :-)
>> Doesn't your government as a rule require that software developed under
>> Federal funding be placed in the Public Domain?
>
> No. US law forbids the US Federal government to use US copyright law to
> enforce its copyright on works authored by its employees as part of their
> duties.
Thanks.
Stefaan A Eeckels
Pat McCann <thi...@bboogguusss.org> writes:
> Stefaan...@ecc.lu (Stefaan A Eeckels) writes:
>
>> In article <598962A1BDCF468A.921A67C8...@lp.airnews.net>,
>> jmay...@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) writes:
>> >
>> > ARGH!!!!!
>> >
>> > Dammit, stuff in the public domain *IS* and *ALWAYS WILL BE* free.
>>
>> One should realize that the notion "freedom" to Europeans is always
>> ambivalent. [.....]
>
> That may be, but I think the more important problem here is an
> ambivalence in the word "stuff" and in the more often seen "software"
> and "program".
>
> Some tend to think, not unnaturally (as software developers), of the
> software as a living entity with an identity which exists from
> conception (if not aborted) throughout all its derivative. This has
> some backing by law in that copyrights in the original follow all
> derivatives (if not tranferred away). (Some even like to pretend that it
> is the software that has rights, but that's a different discussion.)
I suppose it's a figure of speech; anthropomorphisms happen all
the time.
> Others tend to think of the software as the one particular expression of
> ideas that is in front of them. In the usual case, there is only one
> thing that is being licensed and one work that may be copyrighted.
> That's all that really counts. Even derivative works are individual
> works in their own right possibly under their own copyrights with
> their own license.
Which is debatable, even when giving utmost leeway. If a program
incorporates source code that was not written by the author, and
if writings are deemed to belong to their authors, then unauthorized
appropriation of someone's writings is akin to theft. It doesn't
really matter whether software is considered writing, or building
material; taking what doesn't belong to you insn't socially
acceptable (unless you're the state :-).
> So we're often talking past each other. If I take a non-proprietary
> program (ie, one in the public domain) or even a proprietary program
> under an X11-type license and make it part of a proprietary program
> under the more restrictive GPL, the first group will say that I've
> affected the status of "the software" (now it is less free or more
> free, depending upon what the meaning of the word "is^h^hfree" is).
> The second group will say that the status of "the software" hasn't
> changed a bit. I've created a new, if derivative, work with it's
> own status, licensing, etc. I can't affect the original software
> that I was licensed (or given) to use.
Quite correct. It's a matter of opinion. It has been argued many
times on this group that "free" is a word with many definitions,
and that trying to impose one's favourite one is rather pointless
(as is calling those who favour another definition "zealots").
That is why I wanted to point out to those of Anglo-Saxon cultural
roots that the word "freedom" has other connotations in Europe
than in the US, and that this might explain why the GPL's use
of "free" is closer to Europe's perception.
> That seems so obvious that I'm almost ashamed to bother stating it.
> Both sides are right, if they use their concepts in properly in the
> proper context. But it seems to me that the first concept is much more
> easily (and, in fact, more often) abused to promote an argument or
> philosophy. It is a concept that should not be used without
> explanation. People too often make assumptions from it's use that they
> shouldn't. The second concept is usually self-evident, but it could use
> more explanation too since one shouldn't assume the reader will see the
> self-evidence if it's there at all.
In matters of conviction, reasonable arguments are unlikely to
succeed.
Jay Maynard
<Stefaan...@ecc.lu> wrote:
>One should realize that the notion "freedom" to Europeans is always
>ambivalent. European countries, and to a large extend Europeans, see
>freedom as a kind of benevolent dictatorship, protecting people from
>their own mistakes, forcing them to do the "sane" thing, indoctrinating
>them through media funded by the state to guarantee their survival,
>but (as Jerry Pournelle would say "alas") not their independence, etc...
"Those who would sacrifice essential freedom for a little security deserve
neither freedom nor security." -- Ben Franklin
If you are truly depending on governments to guarantee your freedom, despite
the abundance of history in just the past 100 years to the contrary, then
you're deluding yourself. Governments, unless *very* strongly and carefully
limited, are much better at taking away freedom than guaranteeing it.
(Governments do not grant freedom. That only comes from the state of being
human (or, if you wish, from a Creator, if you believe in such).)
This carries over to your views of the GPV. RMS is acting as a benevolent
dictator, demanding that we all be nice to each other, and sacrifice our
inherent rights and freedoms in the process. There's only one problem:
Dictators are *never* benevolent, for the very nature of their power
operates to take away freedom, and that is *always* evil. (And no, my - and
the accepted American - definition of "freedom" does not include the freedom
to harm others without their consent, so save us all the "freedom to commit
murder" red herring.)
>Did you know that Belgium requires, by law, homeowners to take out
>fire insurance, but that building standards don't require fire
>detectors?
Yet another example of the fact that governments screw up everything they
touch.
>I hate to repeat myself, but your GPV zealotry will not convince
>GPL zealots to change their mind, as they can too easily dismiss
>your arguments as unreasonable.
Well, <SteveMartin>EXCUUUUUUUUUUSE MEEEE!!!</SteveMartin>
I can't help but get more than a little frustrated by the continuous torrent
of BS like the message I was responding to. It's been advanced, over and
over and over again, for the past decade, and I've been arguing against it,
over and over and over again. It's getting damned old.
It'd be nice if folks on the GPV side of the fence would, once in a while,
debunk this particular bit of bullshit themselves. It would give me some
reason to believe that zealotry is being replaced with reason.
>It's unlikely that Florian is a zealot. Your ranting might make
>him one.
His words say otherwise - not explicitly, but he's swallowed The Holy Gospel
According to RMS, hook, line, and sinker.
John Hasler
> Saying that you get to keep some of the IP releasing some of it is like a
> situation where the government pays you to build a building, but you get
> the keep part of the building and rent it out yourself.
As far as I know the government always gets an unlimited nonexclusive
license to the IP.
> If there is a need for publicly funded research (and I think there is),
> it is far better to just include the full cost of the research in the
> budget, justify it to the public, and then have the public receive the
> full benefit from the outcome.
Proponents of such government activities usually claim that the public does
receive the full benefit from the outcome since the government receives a
license and the government supposedly is the public.
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org (John Hasler)
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI
Florian Weimer
> Fair public contracting requires transparency, because the people paying
> the bill (i.e. the people) are not able to negotiate freely as would be
> the case in a private transaction.
Is there any country in the world where all (or most) contracts signed
by representatives of the country or government agencies are available
for public review? I don't think so.
Florian Weimer
> > [...] And, unlike shrink- and click-wrap licenses, one
> > does not have to agree to the GPL to get the work or even use it.
> Some claim you can also make derivative works as long as you
> don't distribute them very widely (or something like that),
In fact, a lot of development for the Itanium was done this way, I
think.
Pat McCann
[ a good defense of IP handoff schemes in publicly funded research ]
[ a non-defense of his response to Jay ]
I appreciate your comments in this and the other sub-thread. As I said:
a case can be made, but it smells bad. You deodorized it a wee bit.
Someone else brought up the similar deals that are made with real
property. I know that that big defense companies often get to keep
whole buildings paid for by you and me. That too can be justified
and it too smells.
As for your comments on GNU/GPL you said nothing unreasonable, but
didn't even start to explain your response to Jay that I thought
refected a very different understanding of copyleft. You see, I don't
jump on people for expressing animus towards closed software developers
or even the former's actions such as using copyleft (though I might when
that subject is being discussed). But I do frequently complain when
people express a misunderstanding of the subject, especially, when I
suspect that their language deceives the reader. In your case, I had no
idea whether the cause was ignorance, carelessness, self-deception, pure
deception of the propagandist's kind, or a misunderstanding of your
response (to Jay) on my part. You didn't suprise my by demonstrating a
lack of ignorance, but left me hanging on the rest. Forget about it if
you want, but do please try harder to make your claims about your use of
copyleft more carefully, at least.
eric dahlman
> eric dahlman wrote:
> > Look at it this way there are two things which
> > result from research one is the actual result and the other is the
> > right to copyright works or patents or whatever that may be generated
> > along the way. Just because you pay for one does not mean that you
> > pay for the other.
>
> Your attempt to separate the results from the IP is nonsensical. When
> one does research, the result is knowledge, period. Some of that
> knowledge is protectable, and becomes IP, while some is not, and
> therefore necessarily enters the public domain (unless it is kept
> secret).
I don't know how nonsensical it is to separate knowledge from IP, it
certainly touches on my working life. For instance one algorithm we
are investigating is patented by another party(As to the intelligence
of the patent examiner I will not attest.) I have a set of papers
describing this algorithm and the source to an implementation of the
algorithm. I have all the _knowledge_ about this particular algorithm
I could hope to have. But I can't use this algorithm in a toaster
without paying to license the patent.
The reality is that in the current system with the creation of
knowledge there is an implicit creation of a charter to control some
uses of that knowledge. The whole idea of granting a monopoly over
particular _applications_ of knowledge may just be an artifice of our
society, but that is another topic entirely. Similar barriers to the
application of knowledge have been set up for years; I may know where
the East Indies are but I cannot trade with them without a charter
from the king.
>
> Saying that you get to keep some of the IP releasing some of it is like
> a situation where the government pays you to build a building, but you
> get the keep part of the building and rent it out yourself. These kinds
> of public/private partnerships, exist, frequently in areas such as
> sports stadiums. But they're cesspools of graft and corruption frought
> with sweatheart deals.
That is not really a good comparison because the two parts of the
building can be separated and can exist independent of each other.
The building could have been built with or without the offices for
Graft Inc. The separation between knowledge and a charter to make use
of that knowledge are more tightly bound. You cannot create knowledge
without implicitly creating a charter to apply that knowledge.
As a parallel consider building a car, at the same time the charter to
drive that car is created at zero cost. You cannot create the car
without creating the right to drive it.[1] Once created these two
things can be separated and passed on to others. Hertz will rent you
the charter to drive a specific car but the ownership of the car does
not change hands. You may own a 78' Chevy Vega but the charter to
operate the vehicle can be taken from you if you have too many points
on your license.[2]
One could argue that the right to use a car comes from owning it. The
two are tightly intertwined but separate. I own a plot of land which
just happens to be the habitat of a rare species of slime bellied land
shark. Can I develop it? The government says no. They have revoked
my charter to do with my land as I please. This is a very real
"taking" but it was the intangible charter of use which was taken.
The fact that I still have the deed in my hand shows that I can have
ownership without the charter to use. This distinction is very
important and it is interesting to see the way people ignore these two
aspects. The land owner argues that by limiting his use the
government has "taken" his land but since he still holds the deed the
government claims it hasn't.
The absence of a barrier to infringing on one of these charters does
not make it right. The passenger door on the Vega doesn't lock and
the ignition is so worn that you can turn it on without a key. There
is no barrier for me to take you Vega down to pick up a case of
Thunderbird. Is that O.K.? Now there are cases where the charter to
use a material object are placed in the public domain, for instance
the yellow bikes in Portland. Take it. Use it. Bring it back when
you are done.
The classic argument the IP is not property based on the fact that you
can make a copy of my novel and I still have my original copy while
you no longer have the use of your Vega is irrelevant to this
discussion. Since the actual property which is being discussed is the
charter to use something in a specific way. Is it intangible? Yep.
Is it a total invention of man? Yep. Does it have intrinsic value?
Nope, but what does now days. Why can you by more with you $100
dollar bill than I can with my $1? They have the same intrinsic value
of a little paper and ink.
>
> That's not saying that *your* research deals are corrupt, but when
> mixing public and private business, the hazard is always there. If
> there is a need for publicly funded research (and I think there is), it
> is far better to just include the full cost of the research in the
> budget, justify it to the public, and then have the public receive the
> full benefit from the outcome. Will this cost the public more?
> Probably. So what? Allegedly research grants are to provide some
> public benefit. Releasing the results to the public domain means that
> the public benefits more. The value of that IP does not disappear; you
> just don't get to keep it.
On this I completely agree. I just don't see the public paying full
price because of the higher up front cost. People would be in an
uproar about how they had to pay for all this junk IP. When the cure
for cancer came down the pipe and evened up all the accounts they
would not forgive the failures. People just cannot accept betting
public funds on anything but a winning horse. A good example is NASA.
The most cost effective plan for them would be to send lots fo cheap
probes to Mars and let a few smack into the ground. You can have 90%
chance of success for $1B or 50% for $100 M. Smart money would have
sent 5 probes at $500 M and if 3 bite it so what we still saved $500
Million and got 2 probes there right? Not in the public eye since
$300 M worth of hardware suffered from a sudden deceleration event.
>
> Development of privately owned IP is easily financed with private risk
> capital. There is no need for government money to do that, and no
> public to granting public money to develop IP. This is especially true
> for patents, where the invention must be publicly disclosed regardless.
> If the research is privately funded, a private entity gets the patent
> and the public gets the disclosure. With public funding, a private
> entity gets the patent and the public gets the disclosure. What the
> hell did the public pay for?
As a scientist I would love the disclosure without the IP, that is
where the true value lies for myself and I would argue society. I
have been frustrated before where there is a corporate solution to
some problem that I think may shed some light on a problem I am
investigating but there is not disclosure. It has a chilling effect
on work in that area since you do not know if you are replicating
work, going down a blind alley, or maybe they just fudged their
numbers. With disclosure I can get back to advancing the state of the
art. That I think is very valuable and as a citizen I have no qualms
paying for it.
Your assertion that the development of privately owned IP is easily
financed with private risk capital is only true for limited areas of
research. The research needs to produce something which can be
comercialized on in the limited time a patent would provide.
"Research for profit" would not fund projects which have a long time
to market or no potential market. How will the Grand Unified Theory
of physics increase cosmetic sales?
The government intentionally puts its research dollars into just these
types of areas because of this fact. Can you patent your new particle
which decays in a fraction of a second? Well the process of making it
maybe but who would license it from you for commercial use?
Personally as a taxpayer I think that the government is actually
coming out pretty well in the current arrangement since the IP rights
which they choose not to pay for in general do not have any value. If
they did the research would have most likely been carried out using
private risk capital.
-Eric
Footnotes:
[1] The converse is not necessarily impossible since the state could
grant you a charter to drive a nonexistent car. The value of such a
charter is another question.
[2] This is an interesting type of taking since you can still assign
the charter to drive to someone else even though are barred from
exercising it.
Florian Weimer
> On 22 Jan 2001 08:26:04 +0100, Florian Weimer <f...@deneb.enyo.de> wrote:
> >This is certainly a good think, but IMHO, the work shouldn't enter the
> >public domain, but it should be released under a license which ensures
> >that it remains free software. Otherwise, a spinoff company takes the
> >sources and makes a proprietary product of it, and hardly anything is
> >gained. (Of course, someone could improve the public domain version,
> >but there are enough possibilities to make this infeasible.)
>
> ARGH!!!!!
>
> Dammit, stuff in the public domain *IS* and *ALWAYS WILL BE* free.
If you restrict your view to the actual source code, this is certainly
true.
> If a spinoff company takes it and makes a proprietary product based on it,
> they *CANNOT* stop *ANYONE* from distributing or working on the original
> public domain version. If it bothers you that much, then *YOU* take the
> original version and enhance it. Put your code where your mouth is.
Software is more than just source code, especially in the context
of major research projects. What about documentation? Debugging
tools? Test suites? Maintaining a reasonably complex piece of code
without these is rather painful. The original developer is likely
to have them at hand, and will continue to use them for potential
proprietary development (in addition to the more intimate knowledge),
and is arguably in the best position to maintain a public version as
well (i.e. make occasional releases which fix the most important bugs
encountered by customers with support contracts, for example).
> This kind of thinking - if it's not GPVed, it's not free -
I think we agree that government-funded software development should
result in free software ('free' as defined by the FSF: rights to run,
view, modify, distribute the software and its source). I prefer that
derivative works should remain free software -- you want public domain
software which gives the developer of a derivative work the additional
freedom to take away freedom from the users of his software.
Florian Weimer
> > Dammit, stuff in the public domain *IS* and *ALWAYS WILL BE* free.
>
> One should realize that the notion "freedom" to Europeans is always
> ambivalent. European countries, and to a large extend Europeans, see
> freedom as a kind of benevolent dictatorship, [...]
I can't speak for the majority of Europeans (I don't think many
Europeans care about the more theoretical aspects of politics, most
don't care about politics at all), but for a long time, here in
Europe, there was a strong belief in institutions ensuring freedom.
In fact, some theorist have suggested that it's the institutions which
make freedom possible at all because they enable us to cope with the
fundamental risks of life, at least partially. There was also some
belief in interventionism (i.e. the government has to create and
control some of these instituations in order to make them work). The
belief in interventionism varied from political party to party, but at
least in Germany, even rather conservative politicians did not deny
that the government has to regulate in some areas (and in fact, there
was plenty of regulation).
During the last decade, this view has rapidly changed in Germany, and
quite radically, perhaps not among the theorist, but certainly among
the actual politicians. The evolving European Union and globalization
(or shall I call it 'americanization'?) resulted in deregulation in
all areas, and some institutions formerly considered important were
abolished or are about to be. So things are certainly in the flux
over here.
On the other hand, I find it hard to believe that the Americans
vigorously deny that in order to maximize freedom for the individual,
some regulation is required. After all, bombing civilians for
establishing democracy the civilians couldn't or didn't want to fight
for themselves is a rather American concept.
> Did you know that Belgium requires, by law, homeowners to take out
> fire insurance, but that building standards don't require fire
> detectors?
I find such a requirement perfectly reasonable. ;-)
> It's unlikely that Florian is a zealot. Your ranting might make
> him one.
I've read Jay Maynard's postings in the past...
I might have become a GPL zealot, at least in Jay's eyes, after
visiting LinuxTag, a German Linux fair. At least it became apparent
to me that it's important to emphasize the political aspect of free
software. Before that, I thought that it's impossible to separate
Linux and GNU, but many companies just took that cute penguin and the
fun aspect and continued to sell their proprietary software as before.
> Doesn't your government as a rule require that software developed
> under Federal funding be placed in the Public Domain?
Christmas Island or USA? ;-)
I don't think there's such a requirement in the US---some parts of the
Linux networking code are copyrighted by the director of the NSA.
Florian Weimer
> It's obviously _so_ infeasible that the software being maintained
> under BSD-related licenses are all fictional figments of peoples'
> imaginations, right?
Well, I released some code under a BSD-style license, so I know that
there are other free software licenses than the GPL. ;-) (In this
case, the code was an enhancement for an already existing piece of
software with a BSD-style license, and in order to keep license terms
as simple as possible, my code was released under the same license.)
> If you're running XFree86 on any of your systems, then it's manifestly
> obvious that what you've just said is _NONSENSE_.
Actually, XFree86, and more generally, X, are notoriously bad examples
here, because there are many, many non-free derivative works of it,
and in some cases, this actually causes problems.
Of course, non-GPLed free software exists. I wonder why you guys
think I would deny something that obvious. ;-)
> I would rather think that the government's responsibility would be to
> release their software in a free form, of which "public domain"
> happens to be one of the most usable forms conceivable.
It's the choice between 'free' and 'free, and remains free'. The
GPL approach is better, IMHO, because it ensures that no bogus and
unmaintainable public domain release is made just for the record.
Florian Weimer
> If you are truly depending on governments to guarantee your freedom,
> despite the abundance of history in just the past 100 years to the
> contrary, then you're deluding yourself. Governments, unless *very*
> strongly and carefully limited, are much better at taking away
> freedom than guaranteeing it.
There's no freedom without delegation of power, and that's what
government is about. (I don't think I'm free if I have to guard my
property and family with firearms to prevent my neighbour from
stealing it and raping them, if this is your idea of freedom.)
> (Governments do not grant freedom. That only comes from the state of
> being human (or, if you wish, from a Creator, if you believe in
> such).)
As a human, you have a right to freedom, but this doesn't mean you are
always free automatically. Institutions can help us to preserve our
freedom despite the complexity of life.
> (And no, my - and the accepted American - definition of "freedom"
> does not include the freedom to harm others without their consent,
> so save us all the "freedom to commit murder" red herring.)
What is 'freedom', then? Is it a sort of spiritual thing?
> It'd be nice if folks on the GPV side of the fence would, once in a while,
> debunk this particular bit of bullshit themselves. It would give me some
> reason to believe that zealotry is being replaced with reason.
The other side probably feels the same way. As long as people are
free to write free software, this discussion will continue, I think.
> His words say otherwise - not explicitly, but he's swallowed The
> Holy Gospel According to RMS, hook, line, and sinker.
Hmm, I consider copyleft an interesting concept which can be applied
in many ways, and I really don't care if this makes me zealot or
not. ;-)
BTW, what's your interest in free software? We know the political
part of it (i.e. to convince others that free software should not
involve politics), but I would really like to know you can't just
ignore RMS and his apostles?
Pat McCann
> In article <masnmab...@localhost.localdomain>,
> Pat McCann <thi...@bboogguusss.org> writes:
[ program as living document vs. program as licensed document ]
> > Others tend to think of the software as the one particular expression of
> > ideas that is in front of them. In the usual case, there is only one
> > thing that is being licensed and one work that may be copyrighted.
> > That's all that really counts. Even derivative works are individual
> > works in their own right possibly under their own copyrights with
> > their own license.
>
> Which is debatable, even when giving utmost leeway. If a program
> incorporates source code that was not written by the author, and
> if writings are deemed to belong to their authors, then unauthorized
> appropriation of someone's writings is akin to theft. It doesn't
> really matter whether software is considered writing, or building
> material; taking what doesn't belong to you insn't socially
> acceptable (unless you're the state :-).
Who said anything about "unauthorized appropriation"? Not me. Geesh.
Copyright owners have the exclusive right to create derivative works.
Sure. And they often license that right non-exclusively to others.
But the other create a new, if derivative, work. And of course, any
sub-licensing must be compatible with the primary license. But they
haven't affected the status of the original work. So it seem silly to
some to say that such licensing changes the status of the original work
as is so often claimed in more argumentative terms.
> > So we're often talking past each other. If I take a non-proprietary
> > program (ie, one in the public domain) or even a proprietary program
> > under an X11-type license and make it part of a proprietary program
> > under the more restrictive GPL, the first group will say that I've
> > affected the status of "the software" (now it is less free or more
> > free, depending upon what the meaning of the word "is^h^hfree" is).
> > The second group will say that the status of "the software" hasn't
> > changed a bit. I've created a new, if derivative, work with it's
> > own status, licensing, etc. I can't affect the original software
> > that I was licensed (or given) to use.
>
> Quite correct. It's a matter of opinion. It has been argued many
> times on this group that "free" is a word with many definitions,
> and that trying to impose one's favourite one is rather pointless
> (as is calling those who favour another definition "zealots").
> That is why I wanted to point out to those of Anglo-Saxon cultural
> roots that the word "freedom" has other connotations in Europe
> than in the US, and that this might explain why the GPL's use
> of "free" is closer to Europe's perception.
I'll repeat myself too: Maybe so. But I don't think the major
problem is a misunderstanding of "free" or "freedom". You go on about
"free", leading me to ask: What's correct? What's a matter of opinion?
I'm saying that it's a matter of opinion mostly about exactly what
is being claimed to be free or to have freedom. Specifically, the
software as a living, growing thing (so that if I affect the licensing
of the tenth generation/derivative, I've affected the original too)
or software as a static expression (with possibly unique licensing
which affects no other variation on the expression).
If more people kept these two concepts separated in their minds
and expressed it in their writings, there would be less bickering.
The problem of fuzzy understanding of what is being talked about (what
"program" means) takes another common twist: Who or what is it that is
"free" or has "freedom"? The licensor, the licensees, or the program?
Stallman's "four freedoms" is probably the GNU ideal, but one too often
sees a different, possibly contradictory concept used when it serves a
desirable propagandistic purpose.
eric dahlman
This is an interesting point and I really cannot see how it can be
resolved in an acceptable way. The reason for this is that the value
of B is not known at the point where the contract is made and cannot
be known until after the contract is completed. Consider the case of
digging a tunnel for the government. The disposal of the waste rock
falls on the contractor this could be seen as either a bonus or a
burden depending on the market for fill material. One potential
solution is to make some estimate based on the average cost/benefit of
dealing with the extra rock. Would that be acceptable?
Now as a contractor I pile it up in my gravel pit for later use having
effectively paid the government $30/ton (or whatever the decided rate
was) for it. Now the contract is over and fill dirt market has been
really soft so I still haven't sold any of these rocks. I realize
that they actually contain some rare ore and I sell them for
$4000/ton. This would be a wind fall for me but would it go against
the rules? Since there was no prior knowledge that the rock in
question would have any extra ordinary value did the tax payers
actually lose anything? They paid for a service at a reasonable rate
and received the services they expected. What if the dirt contained
high levels of mercury and could not be used as fill? Should the tax
payers reimburse the contractor and cover the disposal costs?
> How is the public to know that the value of B is, in fact, $X-$Y and not
> something much more? It can't. That's why these kinds of
I moved the above quote down here for easy reference.
None of the parties involved have any idea about the value of B and
cannot know it a priori. The quantity $X - $Y therefor cannot ever be
known when the contract is drawn up. So what are our options? It
seems reasonable for the parties to use an estimate of the value of
$X-$Y based on the expected value B. This is what the contractor does
when they bid for the job. They may be right they may be wrong but if
they have good actuaries they will balance the risks and rewards so
that in the long run things come out right.
I guess my problem is that your model seems to ignore any risk factors
in the process. For instance how could a city buy insurance under
transparency in public spending laws. They cannot know in advance how
much they will be sued for in a given period of time, the public
cannot know how much coverage they will need and if they are
over spending.
This is related to research because you cannot know the value of the
generated IP when the contracts are made. You may win you may not.
So the research institutions submit grant proposals (bids) and some of
them win approval. Sometimes the government wants to keep the IP
sometimes they don't in either case the actuaries figure out what
they think would be a good number for that part of the equation and
fill it in. The assurance for the tax payer that they are receiving
good returns on their investment comes from the bid process since
there are several entities competing for these research dollars. Any
proposal which really gouged the public would ideally lose out in the
competition.
-Eric
Pat McCann
> If you are truly depending on governments to guarantee your freedom, despite
> the abundance of history in just the past 100 years to the contrary, then
> you're deluding yourself. Governments, unless *very* strongly and carefully
> limited, are much better at taking away freedom than guaranteeing it.
> (Governments do not grant freedom. That only comes from the state of being
> human (or, if you wish, from a Creator, if you believe in such).)
I hesitate to disagree with someone I basically agree with, but I think
you missed the point. Some people look at freedom differently than us
Real Americans. There are more and more of them every year. As early
as the '40s, Our Hero (usually), Norman Rockwell, expressed it in his
"Four Freedoms" (Stallman wasn't the first): Two of them were Freedom
From Want and Freedom From Fear. Nothing to do with Liberty (except as
an all-important side effect as we know); everything to do with
Government. They want Freedom From Homelessness, Freedom From Anything
We Don't Like, Freedom to impose whatever law or regulation they think
will make things "better". I'm sure you can make the associations with
Stallman's version of the list. Please do. It should be entertaining.
BTW, (and I hope this doesn't seem to contradict the above - it doesn't)
Governments DO grant freedom. They are the source of our freedoms.
Without governments, you would have precious little freedom, regardless
of anyone's belief in a Creator. (I suppose the theory would be that the
Creator established/allowed governments for the purpose of freedom, etc.)
eric dahlman
> eric dahlman <dah...@cs.colostate.edu> writes:
>
> [ a good defense of IP handoff schemes in publicly funded research ]
> [ a non-defense of his response to Jay ]
>
> I appreciate your comments in this and the other sub-thread. As I said:
> a case can be made, but it smells bad. You deodorized it a wee bit.
>
> Someone else brought up the similar deals that are made with real
> property. I know that that big defense companies often get to keep
> whole buildings paid for by you and me. That too can be justified
> and it too smells.
I don't argue that there are many shady goings on in these types
of deals but that is because of old fashioned corruption nothing else.
They get a building the DOD get a bomber half price, I don't have a
problem with that and I don't feel like there is any justification
going on. Now some convoluted reason why the should get the building
for a dollar with no bomber discount that is another story...
>
> As for your comments on GNU/GPL you said nothing unreasonable, but
> didn't even start to explain your response to Jay that I thought
> refected a very different understanding of copyleft. You see, I don't
> jump on people for expressing animus towards closed software developers
> or even the former's actions such as using copyleft (though I might when
> that subject is being discussed). But I do frequently complain when
> people express a misunderstanding of the subject, especially, when I
> suspect that their language deceives the reader. In your case, I had no
> idea whether the cause was ignorance, carelessness, self-deception, pure
> deception of the propagandist's kind, or a misunderstanding of your
> response (to Jay) on my part. You didn't suprise my by demonstrating a
> lack of ignorance, but left me hanging on the rest. Forget about it if
> you want, but do please try harder to make your claims about your use of
> copyleft more carefully, at least.
I'll try to add more but it ain't easy;-)
The ambiguity in my original reply that was simply poorly executed
editorial control. I did not want to go to the hart of the GPL stuff
in that context and was very likely sloppy. So the verdict is
*carelessness*.
I was trying to point out that I have freed all the "knowledge" that I
have generated while locking up the IP with the GPL, I'll try to
explain the rational for this below. From my perspective the
knowledge part of the equation is the important part while the IP is
just there to keep the accountants happy.
Now personally I have no religious bent one way or another on the GPL
and really would not like to get into it since such discussions tend
to go nowhere, but having been called out on the matter I'll try to
make my point.
The GPL is a very subtle beast in its interaction with my professional
life and I cannot say that I have run to it with open arms. There is
a very real, and I think correct, pressure in my little niche of
academic research to be very open about what we are doing and to share
our results. At the same time we get a bit of a possessive vibe from
the university about protecting our "IP". Now the general rule is
that the university gets a cut of any patents or licensing fees
generated from our research. So they want to protect their interests
which is understandable. We have chemists and EEs here who bring in
millions of dollars in patent licensing fees. I think we bring in
as much as the English department, but I could be wrong.
The GPL offers a way to balance these pressures since we can be
academically open while holding out the promise of licensing fees to
the administration.
Now, what I do I liken to math and any "IP" I generate is really more
along the line of proving a new theorem or finding a new island and not
making a better mouse trap. In that light I don't feel that any of my
work should be "protected" any more than the location of Greenland is
protected. However, I don't make the rules and people have decided
that this type of information can be controlled and licensed. So the
solution at present, which seems to make everyone happy, is for me to
GPL the map. That way I can tell the world where Greenland is and the
university can license the IP to any commercial entity they please.
So the "not free" parts of the GPL actually facilitate my ability to
spread my research since the university has protection from commercial
encroachment that they would not have with another type of license.
Now the rub is that I don't think that the GPL is compatible in any
useful way with my code since I do all of my work in Lisp. The GPL is
very much geared to a batch compiled model of computation and I just
cannot come up with a way that it can be used in any reasonable way in
a Lisp environment. By reasonable I mean that one should be able to
do in Lisp what they can in Unix. This does bother me some times but
the problem is mitigated by the fact that the community of users for
my code is so small and we all know each other, any problems could be
resolved with a phone call.
I'll try to refrain from answering replies about the GPL in this
thread now since I don't want to add fuel to the flame fest. But I'll
read everything to see if I can learn something.
-Eric
Jeffrey Siegal
> > An example: The government contracts you to develop both A and B
> > (because the two can't be developed separately). For the moment, I'll
> > grant your premise that the government only wants A. The full cost to
> > develop is $X, the government only pays you $Y, but you get to keep B.
> > How is the public to know that the value of B is, in fact, $X-$Y and not
> > something much more? It can't. That's why these kinds of
> > public/private partnerships are inherently suceptible to abuse and
> > should not be allowed (and arguably are not allowed under laws which
> > require transparency in public spending).
>
> This is an interesting point and I really cannot see how it can be
> resolved in an acceptable way.
It can be resolved in an acceptable way by having the public pay for the
full cost of research, and having the public receive the full benefits
of that research, which includes both A and B.
The problems arise from the attempt to separate A and B, because there
is no objectively fair and transparent way of doing so. Lack of
fairness and transparency is an open door to corruption and abuse.
Jeffrey Siegal
> This is an interesting point and I really cannot see how it can be
> resolved in an acceptable way. The reason for this is that the value
> of B is not known at the point where the contract is made and cannot
> be known until after the contract is completed. Consider the case of
> digging a tunnel for the government.
> The disposal of the waste rock
> falls on the contractor this could be seen as either a bonus or a
> burden depending on the market for fill material. One potential
> solution is to make some estimate based on the average cost/benefit of
> dealing with the extra rock. Would that be acceptable?
Yes and no. Ideally, the rock should be sold off in a public auction,
the way the government disposes of other property. This minimizes the
possibilty of using a false value of the rock to give the contractor a
special handout.
If the contractor is to keep the rock, it would be minimally acceptable
if the estimate of the value of the rock is a matter of due process on
the public record. Then if someone else comes along and says he can
offer a better price than the original contractor, the public can make a
determination of whether to take the new deal or keep the old one. Even
after the fact, this kind of transparency allows for accountability. If
public contracts regularly understate the value of the rock the
contractor gets to keep, the public can hold its contracting officers
accountable.
What is not acceptable is to just tell the contractor: "Give us a good
deal on the tunnel and we'll let you keep whatever rock as you want"
without any public record as to the value of the rock, nor any public
scrutiny of whether letting the contractor keep the rock was actually a
good idea after all.
John Hasler
> Is there any country in the world where all (or most) contracts signed by
> representatives of the country or government agencies are available for
> public review?
I think that most US Government contracts are subject to the FOIA, but of
course you have to know they exist to file an FOIA request. Many state and
local governments have "sunshine" laws which make just about everything
except ongoing negotiations public.
John Hasler
> If public contracts regularly understate the value of the rock the
You want a tunnel dug: issue an RFQ that says the contractor keeps the
rock, and give the contract to the lowest qualified bidder. Who cares what
the rock is worth? We're digging a tunnel, not running a quarry.
> ...the public can hold its contracting officers accountable.
More likely the losing bidders.
Pat McCann
> Actually, XFree86, and more generally, X, are notoriously bad examples
> here, because there are many, many non-free derivative works of it,
> and in some cases, this actually causes problems.
No, those are GOOD examples, because at least one free version thrives.
Additionally, it has prospered significantly because people had the
freedom to incorporate it into closed software from which they profited
and were able to fund developement which was fed back into the free
version. Under XCopyleft86, those developers would likely have found
some other closed software to develop and XCopyleft86 would have not
benefitted from their freedom. Many also benefitted from the ability
to run the closed X version that worked better for them while others
preferred the open version for various reasons.
> Of course, non-GPLed free software exists. I wonder why you guys
> think I would deny something that obvious. ;-)
People say things that can be taken the wrong way. I don't remember
whether you did, but Browne usually has good reasons for his sarcasm.
> It's the choice between 'free' and 'free, and remains free'. The
> GPL approach is better, IMHO, because it ensures that no bogus and
> unmaintainable public domain release is made just for the record.
I was about to congratulate you for getting it right in your previous
post where you used the more clear "and derivatives remain free", but
now you fall back to bad old habits. I trust I needn't explain the
difference. You want other people's work to be free or they can't
use your work. (Just keeping it real.)
Your last sentence above I don't understand at all. Care to clarify?
Would you say the same about BSD/X11/MIT-type software?
Pat McCann
> On the other hand, I find it hard to believe that the Americans
> vigorously deny that in order to maximize freedom for the individual,
> some regulation is required.
There used to be a strong contingent that believed that government was
mostly there to protect citizens from each other and outsiders, a large
part of that being the judicial system and army/navy and a customs to
enforcement the collection of duties to pay for it. A different
contingent has slowly taken over that believes the same, but also that
government is also a tool of the people to make life better as they
choose to define it. They want a form of democratic mob rule in which
citizens engage in battle royal for power to achieve their own self
interests which for some includes the benevolent ideas shared by good
and bad leaders (I needn't name them) of our past and for others includes
a benevolent desire to enrich their stockholders. The former group
argues for the freedom to have others not do bad things to you; the
latter group argues for the freedom to have others do good things for
you. Of course, there's a continuum there, and the practicalities of
democracy requires many people to be part-time slaves for others, lets
just hope that too many people don't learn it's better to ride the gravy
train.
> I don't think there's such a requirement in the US---some parts of the
> Linux networking code are copyrighted by the director of the NSA.
Don't believe everything you read. But it could be explained by the
NSA buying the copyright on the IP they just payed someone outside
the government to develop. (Nice work, if you can get it.) The law
doesn't prohibit them from owning copyright; they just don't get it
on thier own works, which the courts have interpreted as meaning
works of USG employees.
Pat McCann
> I'll try to add more but it ain't easy;-)
Yeah, it would take me the whole day to write as much as you have today
(in other threads too) and would be much less well written. I wish I
could get my points across as well as you and in your more civil tone.
It's just that I am paying a rather high price to avoid what I consider
bullying by my government who is essentially the sole employer in my
former career field and by Microsoft (whom I've hated since before I
knew they were responsible for PC-DOS) and now I'm disenchanted by
becoming increasingly aware of what I consider to be bullying in the
free software world. All three forms of bullying are quite legal, even
ethical by many standards. Just people giving you Hobson's choice and
advertising it as the greatest offer since the Emancipation. It stirs
the juices, plus it gives me a reason to avoid trying to teach this
old dog new tricks ("retraining" is the awful word, I think).
Your explanation of the various obstacles you weave your professional
way through was interesting. I know we all need to make compromises
and I probably should follow your example. I'm sure I will at times.
I didn't get what you meant about Lisp vs. Unix (Apples and Oranges?),
but I guess it has to do with the rarity of closed-source Lisp programs.
> I'll try to refrain from answering replies about the GPL in this
> thread now since I don't want to add fuel to the flame fest. But I'll
> read everything to see if I can learn something.
You've demonstrated an ability to think clearly. That could help any
discussion.
I'm likely to peter out of this discussion, as I'm in the middle of a
transition from six years in Linux to FreeBSD and need to spend more
time getting reconfigured and getting all my custom files transferred
and incorporated into the new OS. It's messy working in two OSes. So
far, I'm encouraged that it lools like I will be paying a lower-than-
expected price to support the free BSDs instead of (GNU/)Linux.
Jeffrey Siegal
> You want a tunnel dug: issue an RFQ that says the contractor keeps the
> rock, and give the contract to the lowest qualified bidder. Who cares what
> the rock is worth? We're digging a tunnel, not running a quarry.
One of the bidders happens to own the land where the tunnel is being
dug, and knows what will be in that rock (and might be worth something),
and the others don't. Is that fair?
John Hasler
> One of the bidders happens to own the land where the tunnel is being dug,
> and knows what will be in that rock (and might be worth something), and
> the others don't. Is that fair?
Neither fair nor plausible. Nobody is going to bid until they've seen test
borings, which will tell them what is in the rock. Besides, the government
is going to have to compensate the owner of the land for the value of any
valuable rock they remove anyway. Why not just let him keep it, whether he
does the tunneling or not?
Adding byzantine rules in the name of "fairness" just drives up costs and
creates opportunities for fraud and bungling.
--
John Hasler
jo...@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, Wisconsin