3 ms·

But I wish there was one. It would make our civilization much better. Against Intellectual Monopoly http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/against

• stevetrewick 10y ago
  As I recall, Levine insists that FOSS is a perfect example of why we don't need copyright, even though (AIUI) it is in fact foundational to most (all?) OSS licences that the authors assert copyright. For instance "How to use GNU licenses for your own software"[0] states right upfront : Whichever license you plan to use, the process involves adding two elements to each source file of your program: a copyright notice (such as “Copyright 1999 Terry Jones”), and a statement of copying permission, saying that the program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (or the Lesser GPL). AFAICT - and I'm more than happy to be corrected - without copyright (that intellectual monopoly against which the authors argue) there would be no enforcement mechanism for the GPL? [0] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html
  • Animats 10y ago
    That's right. The GPL depends on copyright to make it "viral". Some other licenses let you make changes and go proprietary, and they don't really need copyright. The MIT license, for example.[1] [1] https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT