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- From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
- Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,talk.philosophy.misc
- Subject: Re: Copyleft vs Public Domain
- Message-ID: <1993Jan11.223425.19206@husc3.harvard.edu>
- Date: 12 Jan 93 03:34:24 GMT
- Article-I.D.: husc3.1993Jan11.223425.19206
- References: <6119@comton.airs.com> <1993Jan11.032430.19184@husc3.harvard.edu> <1993Jan11.205207.17773@uvm.edu>
- Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal
- Lines: 82
- Nntp-Posting-Host: husc10.harvard.edu
-
- In article <1993Jan11.205207.17773@uvm.edu>
- wollman@aix2.emba.uvm.edu (Garrett Wollman) writes:
-
- >In article <1993Jan11.032430.19184@husc3.harvard.edu>
- >zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
-
- GW:
- >(I think it's about time for Zeleny to join Farwell in my KILL file...)
-
- Would you like detailed instructions, or are you capable of
- accomplishing this feat on your own?
-
- MZ:
- >>Huh? in what sense is the PD source not readily available?
-
- GW:
- >1. I create a PD program and pass it around to a few people (set A).
- >2. One of these people (B) creates a binary from my source and gives
- > it to another group of people (set C).
- >
- >A is the set of people who have access to the source. C is the set of
- >people who have access to the binary. B = A\cap B = the set of people
- >who have the binary and the source. The people in C - B don't have
- >access to the source, unless B chooses to give it to them.
-
- And Oxford University Press charges a lot of money for electronic
- versions of classic texts, which can be readily obtained by ftp, or,
- for that matter, legally copied from someone gullible enough to have
- paid for them. If your program is in the public domain, the people
- who do not have the source are free to copy it from anyone else. No
- one can legally appropriate public domain texts.
-
- MZ:
- >>I shan't presume to speak for you or your programs, but for anyone
- >>*but* a skilled programmer, Emacs is *far* inferior to any generic
- >>(WYSIWYG, graphical) word processor.
-
- GW:
- >Tell that to the graduate students and technical secretaries who use
- >it daily at this any many other locations around the world.
-
- Let me get this straight: are you seriously suggesting that the extra
- power and complexity of Emacs is a boon to anyone who is only
- interested in cutting and pasting, and so on? Do you also expect BSD
- UNIX to do better among computer novices, than Macintosh?
-
- >>[. . .]
-
- MZ:
- >>The difference is, no single, dedicated agency has ever tried to
- >>maintain and develop the PD extensions of X, TeX, or BSD.
-
- GW:
- >Wrong. In particular, MIT, Stanford and the University of Washington,
- >and UC Berkeley, respectively.
-
- The key word in the above is "dedicated".
-
- MZ:
- >>What I have in mind may be imagined as a planned and
- >>coordinated counterpart to piecemeal PD software development currently
- >>undertaken by the US government and universities.
-
- GW:
- >If the US government plans to develop *any* significant piece of
- >software, then they make sure that it was actually developed by
- >someone who can claim copyright in the work, so that they can then
- >turn around and charge lots of money for it.
-
- This sort of claim is conventionally directed to alt.conspiracy.
-
- >-GAWollman
- >
- >--
- >Garrett A. Wollman | Shashish is simple, it's discreet, it's brief. ...
- >wollman@emba.uvm.edu | Shashish is the bonding of hearts in spite of distance.
- >uvm-gen!wollman | It is a bond more powerful than absence. We like people
- >UVM disagrees. | who like Shashish. - Claude McKenzie + Florent Vollant
-
- cordially,
- mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
- "Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
-