11 ms·

The FSF Allows No Derivatives, and That's a Mistake

24 points by kumaranvpl 10y ago

emn13 10y ago
There's a certain smell of hypocrisy in the FSF publishing these without allowing derivatives. So I was reading this article kind of wanting for it to be convincing. But the argumentation is pretty weak - that's being nice, it's essentially absent. The only substantive argument suggests the FSF gospel could be spread much further if derivatives could literally copy - I doubt it. Nobody is preventing you from normal critique and commentary, so "no derivatives" isn't actually as restrictive as he implies; nor does "no derivatives" mean "no derivative ideas". It just means the actual, literal text. And when it comes to political speech (which this is), fair use is going to carve large exemptions anyhow - at least, to any derivative worth having (see: the four factor test). So yeah. Smells a little hypocritical to disallow derivatives. But this article sure doesn't convince me it matters at all.
- ue_ 10y ago
  I see no hypocrisy at all. The FSF campaigns for software freedom, not necessarily for freedom with regard to works of art. Whether software is a work of art or not is irrelevant. I'm all for public domain with works of art, but it's simply not a battle the FSF has chosen to fight. Stallman himself has said that he has no problem with NoDerivs on his own work, or other people's work. This is why his website is mostly a "verbatim distribution is allowed in any form..." or something like that. I see no issue here at all, and I think it's quite wrong for the author to attack the FSF over this, espeically when there are other things one could complain about (such as linking to MELPA not being allowed on the Emacs mailing list because MELPA d(id|oes)n't have the license for their JS specified as the FSF wants it. I don't mean to criticise the FSF, they're a very good organisation in my eyes and I hope they continue doing what they do.
  - ewzimm 10y ago
    I would take that further and say that using restrictive licenses for opinions shows that the FSF is serious about freedom and not just biased against the idea of restrictive licenses.
  - emn13 10y ago
    I don't disagree. It looks suspicious (the ND license). If you will: it's no noxious odor; it's a faint whiff. But the article doesn't uncover anything that backs up this superficial unease with something solid.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Nobody is preventing you from normal critique and commentary, so "no derivatives" isn't actually as restrictive as he implies; nor does "no derivatives" mean "no derivative ideas". It just means the actual, literal text. A work can be legally derivative without any literal copying.
cure 10y ago
The title of this post "The FSF Allows No Derivatives, and That's a Mistake" is misleading. I would suggest something more like "The FSF publishes a book for which no derivative works are permitted".
nabla9 10y ago
It should be obvious to everyone that you can't make derivatives of writings of others works of opinion. Opinions and translations should be accepted by the author. You can quote and refer to opinion articles of others, but you don't change or improve them.
- yarrel 10y ago
  If you change someone else's words, they are no longer their words. Most licenses require modified versions to be marked as such. So misrepresenting a modified version of, say, the GNU Manifesto as Stallman's original wouldn't be allowed by the license.
  - nabla9 10y ago
    There is no reason for anyone take GNU manfiesto and modify it unless thy want to ride on Stallman's opinon. If someone can't write their own manifesto without copy pasting, they probably should not write manifesto. There is no value or reason to modify opinion works.
    - huxley 10y ago
      Sorry but that's not true, there are plenty of reasons to do so, in particular to provide context, commentary and explanation. When someone annotates a text, they are modifying it. It's called glossing, it has a long and academically valuable history. When Martin Gardner created the "Annotated Alice", he took an existing work by Lewis Carroll and added his explanations and commentary. This was incredibly useful and just the sort of thing that the FSF policy prohibits. As time passes this sort of glossing will only become more valuable. Jeez, even the FSF has had to add footnotes to the GNU Manifesto because of terminological changes and to clear up confusions (and they should add more, pretty much only greybeards like me can remember some of the hardware and protocols he names in the manifesto) To allow the FSF to control contextualization of the GNU Manifesto is against the ideals of the manifesto itself, to quote RMS: "'Control over the use of one's ideas' really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult."
phkahler 10y ago
>> Perhaps simple edits can get rid of long stretches of silence or other blemishes that distract viewers or make the video seem boring. Perhaps mixing together pieces from several videos of the same basic speech delivered can make the video better, more fun to watch, etc. Perhaps one clip from the speech is perfect for a big mash-up of several clips, and this spreads the message the speaker was conveying better. Perhaps the author should provide a specific example of something they want to do but are not allowed. Then a meaningful discussion might be possible.
SloopJon 10y ago
Although I think the author fairly summarizes the Stallman/FSF position on NoDerivs, here are a couple of quotes from gnu.org for background (presumably fair use, NoDerivs notwithstanding): "Works that express someone's opinion—memoirs, editorials, and so on—serve a fundamentally different purpose than works for practical use like software and documentation. Because of this, we expect them to provide recipients with a different set of permissions: just the permission to copy and distribute the work verbatim." https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#OpinionLicenses https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#OpinionLic... "The second class of work is works whose purpose is to say what certain people think. ... To modify them is to misrepresent the authors; so modifying these works is not a socially useful activity." https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.html#opinions https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.h... (excerpted from the book under discussion, Free Software, Free Society) Edit: the second quote is from the book, not first.
jack9 10y ago
> Translation is one possible reason mentioned in that very license That can (and usually does) change the content. Sigh.
serge2k 10y ago
If I'm producing a work of opinion I don't want people to be able to modify it and chop it up and produce something different with my name on it. The policy seems reasonable.

24 points by kumaranvpl 10y ago

emn13 10y ago

There's a certain smell of hypocrisy in the FSF publishing these without allowing derivatives. So I was reading this article kind of wanting for it to be convincing. But the argumentation is pretty weak - that's being nice, it's essentially absent. The only substantive argument suggests the FSF gospel could be spread much further if derivatives could literally copy - I doubt it. Nobody is preventing you from normal critique and commentary, so "no derivatives" isn't actually as restrictive as he implies; nor does "no derivatives" mean "no derivative ideas". It just means the actual, literal text. And when it comes to political speech (which this is), fair use is going to carve large exemptions anyhow - at least, to any derivative worth having (see: the four factor test). So yeah. Smells a little hypocritical to disallow derivatives. But this article sure doesn't convince me it matters at all.

ue_ 10y ago
I see no hypocrisy at all. The FSF campaigns for software freedom, not necessarily for freedom with regard to works of art. Whether software is a work of art or not is irrelevant. I'm all for public domain with works of art, but it's simply not a battle the FSF has chosen to fight. Stallman himself has said that he has no problem with NoDerivs on his own work, or other people's work. This is why his website is mostly a "verbatim distribution is allowed in any form..." or something like that. I see no issue here at all, and I think it's quite wrong for the author to attack the FSF over this, espeically when there are other things one could complain about (such as linking to MELPA not being allowed on the Emacs mailing list because MELPA d(id|oes)n't have the license for their JS specified as the FSF wants it. I don't mean to criticise the FSF, they're a very good organisation in my eyes and I hope they continue doing what they do.
- ewzimm 10y ago
  I would take that further and say that using restrictive licenses for opinions shows that the FSF is serious about freedom and not just biased against the idea of restrictive licenses.
- emn13 10y ago
  I don't disagree. It looks suspicious (the ND license). If you will: it's no noxious odor; it's a faint whiff. But the article doesn't uncover anything that backs up this superficial unease with something solid.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Nobody is preventing you from normal critique and commentary, so "no derivatives" isn't actually as restrictive as he implies; nor does "no derivatives" mean "no derivative ideas". It just means the actual, literal text. A work can be legally derivative without any literal copying.

cure 10y ago

The title of this post "The FSF Allows No Derivatives, and That's a Mistake" is misleading. I would suggest something more like "The FSF publishes a book for which no derivative works are permitted".

nabla9 10y ago

It should be obvious to everyone that you can't make derivatives of writings of others works of opinion. Opinions and translations should be accepted by the author. You can quote and refer to opinion articles of others, but you don't change or improve them.

yarrel 10y ago
If you change someone else's words, they are no longer their words. Most licenses require modified versions to be marked as such. So misrepresenting a modified version of, say, the GNU Manifesto as Stallman's original wouldn't be allowed by the license.
- nabla9 10y ago
  There is no reason for anyone take GNU manfiesto and modify it unless thy want to ride on Stallman's opinon. If someone can't write their own manifesto without copy pasting, they probably should not write manifesto. There is no value or reason to modify opinion works.
  - huxley 10y ago
    Sorry but that's not true, there are plenty of reasons to do so, in particular to provide context, commentary and explanation. When someone annotates a text, they are modifying it. It's called glossing, it has a long and academically valuable history. When Martin Gardner created the "Annotated Alice", he took an existing work by Lewis Carroll and added his explanations and commentary. This was incredibly useful and just the sort of thing that the FSF policy prohibits. As time passes this sort of glossing will only become more valuable. Jeez, even the FSF has had to add footnotes to the GNU Manifesto because of terminological changes and to clear up confusions (and they should add more, pretty much only greybeards like me can remember some of the hardware and protocols he names in the manifesto) To allow the FSF to control contextualization of the GNU Manifesto is against the ideals of the manifesto itself, to quote RMS: "'Control over the use of one's ideas' really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult."

phkahler 10y ago

>> Perhaps simple edits can get rid of long stretches of silence or other blemishes that distract viewers or make the video seem boring. Perhaps mixing together pieces from several videos of the same basic speech delivered can make the video better, more fun to watch, etc. Perhaps one clip from the speech is perfect for a big mash-up of several clips, and this spreads the message the speaker was conveying better. Perhaps the author should provide a specific example of something they want to do but are not allowed. Then a meaningful discussion might be possible.

SloopJon 10y ago

Although I think the author fairly summarizes the Stallman/FSF position on NoDerivs, here are a couple of quotes from gnu.org for background (presumably fair use, NoDerivs notwithstanding): "Works that express someone's opinion—memoirs, editorials, and so on—serve a fundamentally different purpose than works for practical use like software and documentation. Because of this, we expect them to provide recipients with a different set of permissions: just the permission to copy and distribute the work verbatim." https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#OpinionLicenses https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#OpinionLic... "The second class of work is works whose purpose is to say what certain people think. ... To modify them is to misrepresent the authors; so modifying these works is not a socially useful activity." https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.html#opinions https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.h... (excerpted from the book under discussion, Free Software, Free Society) Edit: the second quote is from the book, not first.

jack9 10y ago

> Translation is one possible reason mentioned in that very license That can (and usually does) change the content. Sigh.

serge2k 10y ago

If I'm producing a work of opinion I don't want people to be able to modify it and chop it up and produce something different with my name on it. The policy seems reasonable.