Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software?
Scripsit Greg Pomerantz <gmp@alumni.brown.edu>
> Yes, but a free software developer cannot walk into court and argue
> that they did not intend to grant the right to redistribute
Exactly my point.
> At the very least, the GPL and most other free software licenses are
> be problematic in moral rights jurisdictions simply because the
> developer's intentions with respect to moral rights are not made
> clear by those licenses.
Of course they are. The fact that the author intends for his work to
be free is made very explicit by applying the GPL to it. Since moral
rights are about protecting the author's intentions with creating the
work, there cannot, logically, be any conflict between moral rights
and freedom.
(That is, unless the author was bribed into using a free license, for
example by offering the opportunity to reuse legacy code in return.
Then there might be problems. One might conclude that BSDis licensed
code is more unambigously free in jurisdictions that recognize moral
rights, as the BSD license does not offer such a bribe.)
> Say hypothetically that the LAME developers have an artistic vision to
> allow music fans to freely (as in freedom) rip music from the CDs the
> purchase. Universal Records uses LAME to make copy protected CDs (see
> http://news.com.com/2100-1023-277197.html). How is it stupid if the LAME
> developers walk into a moral rights jurisdiction and ask Universal to
> stop?
It is stupid if they released their software under a free license
without realizing what freedom means.
--
Henning Makholm "Detta, sade de, vore rena sanningen;
ty de kunde tala sanning lika väl som någon
annan, när de bara visste vad det tjänade til."
Reply to: