Re: The Show So Far

[Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>]

tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org> writes:

>> * Software is a social artifact with significant social consequences,
>>   and therefore ought to be responsive to social pressures (i.e., not
>>   just individuals).
> [...]
>> My favorite is the first, which is why I think freedoms should attach
>> to use.  I'm willing to take this disagreement as fundamental, though
>> (which for the current purposes means we'll argue it out if we're ever
>> sitting together over a beer, but probably not 'till then).
>
> So this is a different sort of argument, and calls for a different
> response.  It's not about what makes a license a free software
> license, but more fundamentally, about how software ought to work.

First of all, I must have radically misunderstood the message I was
replying to above.  I was simply pointing out that there are more ways
than one to argue toward Free Software -- and certainly other ways
than your artificiality of copyright argument.  My attitude is that we
should acknowledge that and not try too hard to settle on a particular
grounding for Free Software.

> Since we are presuming free speech, and a broadly free-software
> consensus, we aren't going to tolerate laws that *prohibit*
> publication.  So the only question is: should we have a law that
> *requires* publication?

I'm not sure you're arguing to the point here.  If you are, I'm
misunderstanding you.  How is this an argument for attaching freedoms
to copies rather than use?

-- 
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333  9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03