Ask writes "Leonard Lin put up Lawrence Lessig's Freeing Culture keynote from OSCON. It's excellent. It's great. It's the slides with audio in flash. So download that flash player already and click the url.
I also mirrored it at perl.org.
You still here? See it already, you *will* be entertained.
Near the end of the keynote Lessig asked how many had donated to the EFF. Many hands went up. We felt great. 'Yeah, we're helping!' Then he asked how many had donated more than they spend on their broadband connection... I don't think I was alone in feeling a bit busted.
Yeah? Next time stand up and ask him how much money he gave to charity last year.
Re:Guilt?
petdance on 2002-08-13T19:20:40
You must have a pretty cynical worldview to assume that the answer was "less than what he spent on broadband". I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that.Re:Guilt?
pberry on 2002-08-16T16:43:33
lessig.org
eldred.cc
What have you done?
Re:That rocked
2shortplanks on 2002-08-14T09:34:04
Ooops, for some reason Mozilla just moderated the above post as Flaimbait (which it's not) when I was moderating wickline's post below.Entering the discussion and posting something here should (if I understand Slash properly) undo that moderation.
(not sure why use.perl.org added those semicolons)was released by the author Matthew Wickline
into the Public Domain on 2001 July 17th.
<!--
Actually, the above is not quite true.
I *really* authored the bulk of the code while recovering from
a nasty hangover on Jan 1st 1900. As such, copyright has long-
since expired. Subsequent changes have all been minor patches
which are insufficient to result in the work being removed from
public domain. Please recognize the release as mere shorthand
notation for the more accurate description in this paragraph.
Questions about time travel? Sorry. I've been instructed by a
governmental agency that discussion of this matter is forbidden
as a matter of national security, and that I should plead the
fifth if required. In the unlikely event that this should ever
make it to court, I'm willing to loose some hours at work in
order to have a US court allow public domain IP w/o warranty.
For details, see the likes of
http://www.mail-archive.com/license-discuss@opensource.org/msg03387.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/license-discuss@opensource.org/msg03394.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/license-discuss@opensource.org/msg03380.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/license-discuss@opensource.org/msg03112.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/license-discuss@opensource.org/msg03276.html
-->
</p>
Re:copywrite sucks
ask on 2002-08-14T14:39:58
Cute; but then people can sue you if they make your software break something in their system.Re:copywrite sucks
wickline on 2002-08-14T17:23:42
> but then people can sue you if they make your software break something
The license has a butload of disclaimers on it. This is just the copyright, which says "bits of this code are copywrite so-and-so, and used with permission... and the rest is all public domain"
If folks sue me, I'd be happy to go to court and try for a court decision holding that software can be given away with source available and users can be held responsible for using it.
I don't think a suit is likely, or know if I'd have a snowball's chance in hell of defending against it, but it just seems wrong for folks not to be able to write free software because they could be sued. It's free. I disclaim any surity of suitability for any purpose. I offer the source so you can make the decision as to whether it will do what you want it to do. You install it at your own risk. It costs you nothing. If something breaks, you should have either looked closer, or you should have gone with software that had a guarantee.
I'm preaching to choir, I'm sure:)
-mattRe:copywrite sucks
ask on 2002-08-14T20:49:53
If folks sue me, I'd be happy to go to court and try for a court decision holding that software can be given away with source available and users can be held responsible for using it.
It's much easier to just say "if you use it you have to follow the license which says it can't be my fault" than to prove it wasn't actually your fault.
I agree on it being highly unlikely to be sued, but I don't see any reason not to use the X license or something simple like that if what you want is just to give it away.
I disclaim any surity of suitability for any purpose.
You can't do that without a license.
There's also the problem with putting something in the public domain actually not being that easy. The people who knows says that if it at all is possibly it involves a lot of paperwork; and that it might not be possibly at all anyway. What does that mean? Corporations with a clue will be unlikely to touch your software, because as far as they are concerned it doesn't have a license!
- askRe:copywrite sucks
wickline on 2002-08-14T21:46:37
> don't see any reason not to use the X license or something
Call it stubornness or stupidity. It just bugs me that I have to have the copyright in the first place. Suppose copyright could expire (which, in theory it can)... then eventually the code is public domain and I don't have these worries. Why can't I speed that process up? Why should I have additional legal risk just because the code hasn't sat in a safe for a century? Would the code be better just because it's older?
Sigh...
> You can't do that without a license.
Right. There's a license there. What isn't there is anything saying that the license has to follow the code (because there is a disavowal of copyright, which means I give up the right to say that the license has to follow the code). That's where the stupidity or stubornness come in.
> The people who knows says
See also those URLs in the HTML comment. This is what motivates the note about time travel which means that the copyright has expired, which means that the "releasing into the public domain" is redundant given that the code is already in the public domain.:)
-mattRe:copywrite sucks
kwilliams on 2002-08-15T06:58:53
I don't think a suit is likely, or know if I'd have a snowball's chance in hell of defending against it, but it just seems wrong for folks not to be able to write free software because they could be sued. It's free. I disclaim any surity of suitability for any purpose.I'm not sure I have a strong opinion on this topic one way or the other, but I don't think the above statements make sense. With most things, if I create something dangerous (say, some poison gas in a tube) and leave it out in the open, it doesn't make much difference whether I claim I still own it, or whether or not I forbid people from using it. The fact that I created it and intentionally put it where people could get their hands on it seems to be the important bit.
In general, I think consumer protection acts have been a really good trend in recent years, and I do think they may (or should) have some applicability to the world of software.
-Ken
Re:copywrite sucks
wickline on 2002-08-15T12:43:40
> The fact that I created it and intentionally put it where
> people could get their hands on it seems to be the important bit.
If that is the important bit, then texts which contain instructions for making dangerous substances should not be left where people could get their hands on them.
There is a tradeoff here. If you tend to see code as speech, and if you're a proponent of free speech, then you'll be more likely to allow folks to write whatever code they want so long as it isn't the code equivilant of slander, libel, hate speech, inciting to riot, "fire" in a crowded building.
Speech made in the spirit of well-intended creative expression or personal research into "how do you do this sort of thing" shouldn't be stiffled.
On the other hand, if you look at writing code as constructing a device or tool more than as speech, then the value of free speech does not apply. I still think you should be able to hold users of devices accountable for their own actions though. A tire iron is a potentially dangerous device, but you don't see anyone pressing suit against auto manufacturers for putting on in the trunk of a car when someone removes it from said truck and commits an act of violence.
We're not talking about coding the equivilant of a tube of poison gas....but then I may be more prejudiced by my belief that code is speech, and therefor less capable of seeing the aplicability of the consumer protection angle.
-mattThank you!!!
jdavidb on 2002-08-14T14:42:50
I read that discussion some time back, but didn't make any note of where I found it. I've been looking for it for a long time.
