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Richard Stallman wrote the GPL and never ever had any goal to "discourage freeloading". His goal was to create an entirely free software ecosystem where the com

Richard Stallman wrote the GPL and never ever had any goal to "discourage freeloading". His goal was to create an entirely free software ecosystem where the community users, the end-users were not limited and controlled by proprietary software publishers. Whether or not that goal was or wasn't well-served by the GPL, that was and remains the motivation.

Nomentatus 10y ago
Copyleft is an interesting invention. It isn't in any way necessary for that freedom thing. It never was. I can't speak to RS's original motivations, but I know well how the licenses were originally perceived, sold, and even argued against. If your argument means that RS et al will cheerfully drop the patent and tivoization clauses as extraneous; great. So far, I have seen no hint of this. The best way to summarize your argument is that RS got wildly distracted from his original goals, and that's my argument.
- belorn 10y ago
  How do patent and tivoization help to "create an entirely free software ecosystem where the community users, the end-users were not limited and controlled by proprietary software publishers."? It is rather easy to see how patent and tivoization are harmful to the creation of such ecosystem.
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    Indeed, if you abhor all intellectual property law of any kind, and don't care whether incentives do or don't further innovation; then you'll want to have more than free software, you'll want to abolish all patents, and take us back a few hundred years.
    - quadrangle 10y ago
      Or you could be a completely rational person with no abhorring of anything, care totally about incentives and innovation, and come to the conclusion based on empirical evidence that patent law has hampered innovation and barely ever helped anything. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.27.1.3 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.27.1.3
      - Nomentatus 10y ago
        I believe that's precisely the species of abhorrence that I was referring to, actually (abhorrence since it basically leaves no patent standing.) I have met it before! As for the article, "no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity" is obviously outright false. We certainly don't have proof, but there's a helluva historical correlation between patent enforcement (or existence) and countries with strong economic growth, particularly in technology sectors. That has to be referred to as evidence - since evidence which cannot be misleading, i.e. "incontrovertible evidence" is actually proof. Moreover, histories of technology often show simultaneous invention, and in such cases, the obscure and unsuccessful efforts very strongly tend to appear in areas where patent law is not efficient or respected, and therefore investment for development of inventions is lacking. Without his patent, James Watt could not have and would not have (finally, after a long effort) found a sufficiently rich partner who could fund the development and production of his new kind of steam engine. Note too that even if patents weren't globally efficient (which I strongly believe they are), they nonetheless attract inventors to your country and so are locally efficient (a prisoner's dilemma that only coordination through treaties would defeat.) This doesn't mean that present patent law is ideal, or that the historical context hasn't at least partly vanished, however: very complex technologies (which we're now awash in) create situations in which it may be more valuable to cease to produce smartphones and instead use patents to hold a gun to the head of others and merely extract rent from those still producing them (sneezeMicrosoft.) Since you aren't producing phones, others can't retaliate by refusing to license their patents - you no longer need their patents. When more than one (or perhaps a thousand) IP holders want to extract rent from the same item, obviously this can introduce great inefficiencies. Few patents are truly essential (outside FRAND standards, a different situation) but many are costly to get around. One way or another, sooner or later, we may have to deal with this situation. I wish I knew just how.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
rumcajz 10y ago
It should be mentioned though that that goal is well served even by permissive-licensed software.
- belorn 10y ago
  It similar to how nations employ different tactics to create peace and prospect. No single solution is perfect in every situation, and different nations will default to one method over an other. In specific situations it might be the best method to have no rules, while in others it might be best to have common rules, shared by everyone, and have those enforced by police.

Nomentatus 10y ago

Copyleft is an interesting invention. It isn't in any way necessary for that freedom thing. It never was. I can't speak to RS's original motivations, but I know well how the licenses were originally perceived, sold, and even argued against. If your argument means that RS et al will cheerfully drop the patent and tivoization clauses as extraneous; great. So far, I have seen no hint of this. The best way to summarize your argument is that RS got wildly distracted from his original goals, and that's my argument.

belorn 10y ago
How do patent and tivoization help to "create an entirely free software ecosystem where the community users, the end-users were not limited and controlled by proprietary software publishers."? It is rather easy to see how patent and tivoization are harmful to the creation of such ecosystem.
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  Indeed, if you abhor all intellectual property law of any kind, and don't care whether incentives do or don't further innovation; then you'll want to have more than free software, you'll want to abolish all patents, and take us back a few hundred years.
  - quadrangle 10y ago
    Or you could be a completely rational person with no abhorring of anything, care totally about incentives and innovation, and come to the conclusion based on empirical evidence that patent law has hampered innovation and barely ever helped anything. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.27.1.3 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.27.1.3
    - Nomentatus 10y ago
      I believe that's precisely the species of abhorrence that I was referring to, actually (abhorrence since it basically leaves no patent standing.) I have met it before! As for the article, "no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity" is obviously outright false. We certainly don't have proof, but there's a helluva historical correlation between patent enforcement (or existence) and countries with strong economic growth, particularly in technology sectors. That has to be referred to as evidence - since evidence which cannot be misleading, i.e. "incontrovertible evidence" is actually proof. Moreover, histories of technology often show simultaneous invention, and in such cases, the obscure and unsuccessful efforts very strongly tend to appear in areas where patent law is not efficient or respected, and therefore investment for development of inventions is lacking. Without his patent, James Watt could not have and would not have (finally, after a long effort) found a sufficiently rich partner who could fund the development and production of his new kind of steam engine. Note too that even if patents weren't globally efficient (which I strongly believe they are), they nonetheless attract inventors to your country and so are locally efficient (a prisoner's dilemma that only coordination through treaties would defeat.) This doesn't mean that present patent law is ideal, or that the historical context hasn't at least partly vanished, however: very complex technologies (which we're now awash in) create situations in which it may be more valuable to cease to produce smartphones and instead use patents to hold a gun to the head of others and merely extract rent from those still producing them (sneezeMicrosoft.) Since you aren't producing phones, others can't retaliate by refusing to license their patents - you no longer need their patents. When more than one (or perhaps a thousand) IP holders want to extract rent from the same item, obviously this can introduce great inefficiencies. Few patents are truly essential (outside FRAND standards, a different situation) but many are costly to get around. One way or another, sooner or later, we may have to deal with this situation. I wish I knew just how.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

rumcajz 10y ago

It should be mentioned though that that goal is well served even by permissive-licensed software.

belorn 10y ago
It similar to how nations employ different tactics to create peace and prospect. No single solution is perfect in every situation, and different nations will default to one method over an other. In specific situations it might be the best method to have no rules, while in others it might be best to have common rules, shared by everyone, and have those enforced by police.