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[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index][tlug] RE: GPL V3
- Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2006 13:21:25 +0900
- From: <burlingk@example.com>
- Subject: [tlug] RE: GPL V3
> ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2006 00:47:19 +0900 > From: stephen@example.com > Subject: [tlug] GPL V3 > To: Tokyo Linux Users Group <tlug@example.com> > Message-ID: <87hcxo30jc.fsf@example.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > burlingk@example.com writes: > > > What are people's oppinions about the discussion draft for GPL V.3? > > Gag me. Ah, you can't. So I guess I'll speak. > > GPL v.2 is a better document, with a lot of problems that should have > been fixed in a GPL v2.1. That will never happen, now. :-( > <snip> > > The only saving grace is the attempt to bring sanity to the patent > license by providing an explicit no-action covenant rather than > depending on an implicit license. But the current draft really screws > the pooch there. The first paragraph (including the definition of > "essential patent claims" in the preamble) of section seems to allow a > patent worded as > > Claim 1. A foo for frobbing bars. > Claim 2. A foo as in Claim 1, with a GUI for viewing baz. > > to be embodied in such a way (eg, a library implementing only foo) > such that a GUI foo cannot be implemented in free software. That > seems reasonable to me, but the froth I've seen around the web > suggests that very few FS advocates like it. > <snip> Ok, I am snipping a LOT of this, because if I leave everything worth replying to in, I would have to leave the whole message. As I said, I don't quite like the license yet. :P It has a LONG ways to go in my opinion. 1. I am among the people that do not like the way they are trying to merge software related restrictions and hardware related restrictions. I personally do not mind the idea of a commercial company making commercial use of GNU products. GPL v2 encouraged that. The average commercial product is not going to be designed so that the average user can open it up, and change it's insides. The average user wants a sleek box that the only obvious inputs/outputs are the ones going from the cable line to the back of the box, and from the box to the TV. If TiVo wants to make a product that isn't easily modifiable, then why should we freak out. The device was not designed to be changed regularly. It was designed to work with their system, in a specific manner. If you want to download their code, do something with it, and make it work on your PC or similar, then fine. But I don't think people should freak out because they can't make the modified code work with the unmodified TiVo. ^^ I am mainly using TiVo as an example, because it is the one that was used most often when discussing the GPL v3 discussion drafts. :P Someone at one point even used the term TiVo clause. ^_^ 2. Yes, their patent clauses are kind of scary looking. I think I understand that part though. They are trying to cater them in a manner to work with the current state of American Patent law. For those of you that actually know patent law, don't get up in arms just yet till you read the next few sentences. :) The patent laws themselves are solid, sound, and leave few loopholes for people to screw things up. That is not the problem. The problem is the judges that are passing out patents at the moment. They are totally ignoring patent law. They are passing out patents on things that are either already patented, or are unpatentable under American law by virtue of the fact that they are already basic components of existing projects/products/works. Under American patent law, a person cannot patent things such as "a button to confirm a selection," or "a widget to create a button to minimize or maximize a screen," or anything of that nature, because those things are already pre-existent and commonly used parts of existing works. They are parts of almost every existing work since about 1993 or so. However, judges are passing out patents on just that sort of thing. Because this sort of patent has been being handed out left and right for the last five years or so, they are trying to word the license in such a way as to be solid and valid even if it comes up against patents that are effectively illegal. 3. The license is trying to cope with all the broken things that have been taking place in American copyright and patent laws for the last ten years. Again, the laws themselves are not so badly written, but the ways they are being enforced is strange and bizarre. The DMCA does not say half of what the hype says. It doesn't even really change copyright law. It just restates what has been stated in past in a more plain English manner. That is why it is called an act instead of a bill or a law. It doesn't really change any rules, it just enforces action based on the rules. HOWEVER, the judges and lawyers dealing with the DMCA are not acting on the law itself, but on the hype that has been in the media since about 1997 or so (a year before the act was passed). Before the Act was ever passed, there were a lot of people yelling and screaming about what it was going to say. That hype caught on in the free software movement, and on the proprietary side of things. All those rights that the hype claims we lose to the act, have somehow become the defacto law. Because the people believed that was the law, and allowed themselves to be pushed around long enough to form precedents. At least this is what the hype says. I do not know how many "innocent victims" there have been of the DMCA, but I have heard just as many reports saying that there have been very few people prosecuted under it as I have heard otherwise. I think I will research this when I get proper internet access. If anyone else wants to look into it, I would love to hear any real details. To make a long story short, it would seem that American copyright law is being superceded by hype. It is getting scary. Trying to write a license to protect against that is an act of desperation, and a road to insanity. This hype seems to be the driving force behind the GPLv3. :/
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