Posted on 02/23/2006 7:31:29 AM PST by N3WBI3
Who could be upset by a scheme that allows free use of software? Well, Gervase Markham has found one Trading Standards officer who is
Who could possibly be upset with the Mozilla Foundation for giving away its Firefox browser?
One of my roles at the Mozilla Foundation relates to copyright licensing. I'm responsible for making sure that the software we distribute respects the conditions of the free software licences of the underlying code. I'm also the first point of contact for licensing questions.
Most of the time, this job involves helping people who want to use our code in their own products understand the terms, or advising project members who want to integrate code from another project into our codebase. Occasionally, however, something a little more unusual comes along.
A little while ago, I received an e-mail from a lady in the Trading Standards department of a large northern town. They had encountered businesses which were selling copies of Firefox, and wanted to confirm that this was in violation of our licence agreements before taking action against them. * Click here to find out more!
I wrote back, politely explaining the principles of copyleft that the software was free, both as in speech and as in price, and that people copying and redistributing it was a feature, not a bug. I said that selling verbatim copies of Firefox on physical media was absolutely fine with us, and we would like her to return any confiscated CDs and allow us to continue with our plan for world domination (or words to that effect).
Unfortunately, this was not well received. Her reply was incredulous:
"I can't believe that your company would allow people to make money from something that you allow people to have free access to. Is this really the case?" she asked.
"If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation, as it is difficult for us to give general advice to businesses over what is/is not permitted."
I felt somewhat unnerved at being held responsible for the disintegration of the UK anti-piracy system. Who would have thought giving away software could cause such difficulties?
However, given that the free software movement is unlikely collectively to decide to go proprietary in order to make her life easier, I had another go, using examples like Linux and the OpenOffice office suite to show that it's not just Firefox which is throwing a spanner in the works.
She then asked me to identify myself, so that she could confirm that I was authorised to speak for the Mozilla Foundation on this matter. I wondered if she was imagining nefarious copyright-infringing street traders taking a few moments off from shouting about the price of bananas to pop into an internet cafe, crack a router and intercept her e-mail.
However, the more I thought about it, providing a sensible reply to that question is somewhat difficult. How could I prove I was authorised to speak for the Foundation? We're a virtual organisation we have three employees, one in Vancouver, one in Virginia and one in leafy North London, with no office or registered trading address in the UK. As far as the Mozilla part of my life goes, my entire existence is electronic.
In the end, I just had to say that the fact that I am capable of receiving and replying to e-mail addressed to licensing@mozilla.org would have to be sufficient. She would just have to take it on trust that I was not a router-cracking banana merchant. She must have done so, as I never heard from her again.
While the identity verification aspect of this incident is amusing, what is more serious is the set of assumptions her e-mails implied. It demonstrates how the free software model disrupts the old proprietary way of doing things, where copying was theft and you were guilty until proven innocent.
In a world where both types of software exist, greater discernment is required on the part of the enforcers. I hope this is the beginning of the end of any automatic assumption that sharing software with your neighbour must be a crime.
Gervase Markham says that he works for the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting choice and innovation on the internet. Of course, he may just be a banana seller. His blog is Hacking For Christ
You get more ridiculous with every post. Capitalism is based on private ownership of property, and selling it for profit, not property owned by the government or some "community". Trying to co-opt the word "capitalism" for your so called community isn't going to work LOL.
Basically, it doesn't contain Stallman's rabid anti-business philosophy. For example, you could modify some Mozilla code and integrate it into your closed-source, for-sale application, but you would only have to license your modifications to the Mozilla code under the MPL. Your own code can remain proprietary.
Going the other way, IIRC you could make a closed-source module linked to the Mozilla application and sell the whole thing under the conditions above.
Maybe, but most "open source" is based on Stallman's license, to the tune of 75 percent or so I'm sure you know.
Sorry guy; Capitalism, by definition, does not compel you to sell your private property. You can, so long as you choose to sell your private property but you may also give it away and still be a capitalist (because its *your* private property), you may also keep it to yourself (because its *your* private property).
You may also license the use of your property with conditions of your choosing (because its *your* private property). What you may not do is compel someone to do something with their private property for your or anyone else's economic benefit which is what you advocate doing..
Souds a bit like the LGPL..
What would you propose I do instead, support the copyleftists like yourself?
Source?
It's not private property when you give it away for free, and private ownership is the basis of capitalism. The rest is just you spinning and distorting like usual.
Its still the intellectual property of the copyright holder and they may dictate how its used. I hear songs on the radio all the time for free, it does not give me the right to copy them and use them to make profit...
And when I provide it, you will do what exactly? You've never done anything before except continue your devotion to all things copyleft.
Forget "money," think "value," which is what really matters in capitalism. BobCo received value from the previous OSS programmers in the form of free code. BobCo then makes some changes and additions (which have value). BobCo then gives that value away, but is probably still ahead, since most likely it received more value that it gave.
In the closed-source model it's reversed. BobCo gives value (money) to get a license to modify and resell software, but keeps value in its modifications.
Now BobCo redistributes. JohnCo does the value thing the same, getting and giving value with its use of the original and additions. Now BobCo downloads JohnCo's improvements to its code. BobCo just received value again because somebody else improved its additions to the software. The only way BobCo was able to receive that value a second time was by giving value initially.
I wouldn't get too worried about it. Netscape and IE are both free as well. Danged capitalistic competition.....
So pretty please tell us where you got this number of 75% of OSS products are under a license that Stallman wrote. Now maybe you have something, but given your history I don't take too much you say at face value... Kind like when you said Linux was only 10% of the world server market...
Please, not that old crap again. I've explained it to you how many times now? Those are tongue-in-cheek, user-submitted banners in a graphics style popular at the time that was used for many things not relating to politics or ideology. Hell, I used that style to make a couple of party flyers.
BTW, that's "party" as in drinking and dancing, not "party" as in communist. Pretty good parties too, I might add.
It is the oldest. But the amount of software under the MPL is growing fast. It helps that the MPL is much more detailed on various copyright and patent issues, something that Stallman is trying to put into the GPL 3 that even Linus is currently trashing.
Sort of on the subject of module additions to MPL code, but it's a lot clearer, and does it the other way (MPL code as a core part of your application).
All companies benefit since they spend less time solving problems that other companies have already solved. Imagine if every company had to write their own indexing software instead of simply using a package, like Lucene.
Private property is what allows you to give it away for free. You can't give away what's not yours.
Besides, nobody gives away OSS code. They retain copyright, the code is licensed. They only allow free use of the code under certain conditions.
Linus and Stallman have never goten along, Torvalds is much more pragmatic.
Where's rdb3??
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He has MS and I wish him well. Matter of fact I was thinking the same this morning
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