Re: Documentation Standards was Re: [ox-en] UserLinux
- From: Russell McOrmond <russell flora.ca>
- Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 13:59:17 -0500 (EST)
On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Raj Mathur wrote:
Hey, great to connect up online -- haven't seen you since my 1998 trip
to India...
Copyright actually has nothing to do with freedom. GPL programs are
copyrighted too -- the issue of freedom only comes up when the rights
to disseminate are restricted.
Copyright can have to do with protecting rights, but doesn't have to.
Like any protection of rights you are often protecting one group of people
at the expense of another.
I offer my own balance in my submissions to Canadian parliamentarians
on Copyright reform: http://www.flora.ca/copyright2003/
Martin> but people still persist in this free as in freedom stuff
Martin> free as in freedom as in the us means being able to
Martin> innovate to profit, contract and make and sell property
You're forgetting that there are restrictions on the means by which
one may profit and contract; if the means of garnering profit is
deemed to be anti-social (e.g. stealing your neighbours car or
hoarding fuel in a time of national shortage) then it is just not
permitted.
He's also forgetting that royalty payments are a single business model
among many, not what determines whether someone is able to "innovate to
profit, contract". The claim that "free as in freedom" means enforcement
of a single business model onto an entire economy is nonsense, even in the
context of the current regime in the United States.
I believe that there is a greater ability to "innovate to profit,
contract" in a peer production based economy than a knowledge
manufacturing based economy. This is something that just makes obvious
sense to me, so is not something that I can yet 'prove'. I simply can not
understand the logic behind those who believe that extending the business
models and socio-economic problems of the Industrial Era into a
post-industrial information economy can be beneficial, other than to the
incumbent manufacturers.
I recognize that our own language is part of the problem and people who
may agree are not able to figure that out as they are using different
language.
For the longest time people incorrectly used the term "commercial
software" to mean software marketed the way Microsoft Office is. This was
incorrect as whether or not something was commercial or not did not relate
to a single business model. Then people (including myself) were using the
term "proprietary" for this type of software, and that too has caused
confusion given that any software not in the public domain is considered
"proprietary" under copyright law.
See: FLOSS is "proprietary software"
http://weblog.flora.org/article.php3?story_id=480
I now try to be as specific as I can, with software distributed like
Microsoft Office being termed "software manufacturing" as the very limited
business models from the manufacturing sector are being used. Since I
believe software is entirely different than hardware, I consider
hardware/manufactured business models to be inappropriate for all but a
few small niche markets.
---
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
Governance software that controls ICT, automates government policy, or
electronically counts votes, shouldn't be bought any more than
politicians should be bought. -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/
_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/