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Copyright is a property right though, and I was under the real impression that if there was any right libertarians did protect, it was property. Which would aga

by mpyne 13y ago

Copyright is a property right though, and I was under the real impression that if there was any right libertarians did protect, it was property. Which would again make MIT/BSD-style licenses as a libertarian license. But either way, keep in mind that the lawsuit you posit can only happen if the changes you speak of are not themselves licensed under a FOSS license. With GPL this is effectively impossible; you can't link GPL code with proprietary code except with certain limited restrictions (or maybe it was can't distribute, but either way no downstream should be affected by your proprietary changes). In this case GPL restricts your individual freedom even to write proprietary modifications and use them for the good of the whole commons. Because of the "individual freedom" nature of MIT/BSD licenses, you can legally link BSD and proprietary code. If that ends up being a problem for someone else, well, so be it.

_delirium 13y ago
Many libertarians do not believe copyright is a form of property. Rather, they believe copyrights and patents are a form of state-granted temporary monopoly. The state grants people temporary monopolies as a sort of social engineering, in order to incentivize certain kinds of intellectual activity that the state considers worth incentivizing ("to promote the progress of science and useful arts", as the U.S. Constitution says). Hence libertarians with such a view would oppose copyright and patents, like they oppose any other state-granted monopolies. One essay on the subject: http://www.freenation.org/a/f31l1.html http://www.freenation.org/a/f31l1.html
- mpyne 13y ago
  > Hence libertarians with such a view would oppose copyright and patents, like they oppose any other state-granted monopolies. These libertarians would still see GPL as a non-libertarian license then. GPL, like other "copyleft" licenses, depends upon strong copyright law to work at all. GPL without copyright is just public domain, and not GPL at all. BSD/MIT-style licenses, on the other hand, barely use copyright at all. Most of the verbiage is to disclaim warranty and ensure the license itself remains with the source, the only thing mentioned about copyright itself is a simple grant that modifications may be made.
  - _delirium 13y ago
    Yes, but the main thing the GPL does with copyright is to attempt to defang the exercise of the copyright monopoly itself, by preventing you from yourself using copyright law to remove downstream users' reuse/modification/distribution rights. It's not an ideal solution, but it's a pragmatic attempt to turn copyright law against itself. The BSD/MIT licenses, by contrast, do nothing to hamper those who would exercise such a a monopoly (i.e. the authors of proprietary software), and in fact seem often explicitly chosen in order to enable them.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Right. I'm sorry, I had missed that paragraph in one of your earlier comments as GPL being a way to make copyright not suck. I would still argue that GPL's intended effect (that source remain open and available for inspection) is achievable only with copyright, while never achievable with BSD/MIT (which can always be taken proprietary again, even without copyright law). So in that guise GPL (w/ copyright) is more concerned with society overall (i.e. having access to source), even to the exclusion of some individual freedoms. Additionally these restrictions cannot be enforced without some version of an IP regime which makes it even more non-libertarian.
      - _delirium 13y ago
        Oh, good point. I tend to forget that aspect of the GPL. My comments had in mind only the "viral copyleft" aspect. That is, a license that grants you permission to modify & distribute modified copies, and also specifies that you have to retain that same permission in all derivative works, but doesn't require anything else. You're right that the GPL has the additional affirmative requirement to actually release source code, which is using copyright law to compel a specific action. And yeah, that does seem to come from a certain collective-good concern: GNU want people to not only legally be able to modify software, but to be able to do so in practice too, so have written some things to try to make sure that's the case (the LGPL "users must be able to swap out the library" requirement is another example). I wonder if there are any licenses that have the "viral" licensing terms but impose no other requirements. CC-BY-SA comes to mind, but isn't widely applied to software.
- eevilspock 13y ago
  Do the libertarians that believe copyrights and patents are a form of state-granted temporary monopoly also believe that private ownership of land in perpetuity is also a state-granted monopoly, in this case non-temporary? Are these anti-copyright and patent libertarians real or royal libertarians?

by mpyne 13y ago

_delirium 13y ago

Many libertarians do not believe copyright is a form of property. Rather, they believe copyrights and patents are a form of state-granted temporary monopoly. The state grants people temporary monopolies as a sort of social engineering, in order to incentivize certain kinds of intellectual activity that the state considers worth incentivizing ("to promote the progress of science and useful arts", as the U.S. Constitution says). Hence libertarians with such a view would oppose copyright and patents, like they oppose any other state-granted monopolies. One essay on the subject: http://www.freenation.org/a/f31l1.html http://www.freenation.org/a/f31l1.html

mpyne 13y ago
> Hence libertarians with such a view would oppose copyright and patents, like they oppose any other state-granted monopolies. These libertarians would still see GPL as a non-libertarian license then. GPL, like other "copyleft" licenses, depends upon strong copyright law to work at all. GPL without copyright is just public domain, and not GPL at all. BSD/MIT-style licenses, on the other hand, barely use copyright at all. Most of the verbiage is to disclaim warranty and ensure the license itself remains with the source, the only thing mentioned about copyright itself is a simple grant that modifications may be made.
- _delirium 13y ago
  Yes, but the main thing the GPL does with copyright is to attempt to defang the exercise of the copyright monopoly itself, by preventing you from yourself using copyright law to remove downstream users' reuse/modification/distribution rights. It's not an ideal solution, but it's a pragmatic attempt to turn copyright law against itself. The BSD/MIT licenses, by contrast, do nothing to hamper those who would exercise such a a monopoly (i.e. the authors of proprietary software), and in fact seem often explicitly chosen in order to enable them.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Right. I'm sorry, I had missed that paragraph in one of your earlier comments as GPL being a way to make copyright not suck. I would still argue that GPL's intended effect (that source remain open and available for inspection) is achievable only with copyright, while never achievable with BSD/MIT (which can always be taken proprietary again, even without copyright law). So in that guise GPL (w/ copyright) is more concerned with society overall (i.e. having access to source), even to the exclusion of some individual freedoms. Additionally these restrictions cannot be enforced without some version of an IP regime which makes it even more non-libertarian.
    - _delirium 13y ago
      Oh, good point. I tend to forget that aspect of the GPL. My comments had in mind only the "viral copyleft" aspect. That is, a license that grants you permission to modify & distribute modified copies, and also specifies that you have to retain that same permission in all derivative works, but doesn't require anything else. You're right that the GPL has the additional affirmative requirement to actually release source code, which is using copyright law to compel a specific action. And yeah, that does seem to come from a certain collective-good concern: GNU want people to not only legally be able to modify software, but to be able to do so in practice too, so have written some things to try to make sure that's the case (the LGPL "users must be able to swap out the library" requirement is another example). I wonder if there are any licenses that have the "viral" licensing terms but impose no other requirements. CC-BY-SA comes to mind, but isn't widely applied to software.
eevilspock 13y ago
Do the libertarians that believe copyrights and patents are a form of state-granted temporary monopoly also believe that private ownership of land in perpetuity is also a state-granted monopoly, in this case non-temporary? Are these anti-copyright and patent libertarians real or royal libertarians?