Re: Economics and the GPL

On Thu, 13 Jun 2002, Matt Seitz wrote:

> --- "Deven T. Corzine" <[email protected]> wrote:
> > But they can't stop you from 
> > using their GPL verbatim, whatever the terms, and then blatently violating 
> > those terms.  After all, as the copyright holder, you're the one with the 
> > standing to enforce those terms, not the FSF, and you're not likely to sue 
> > yourself for compliance, are you?
> 
> But the FSF is the copyright holder on the GPL.  Any unauthorized copying of
> the GPL, modified or not, would be a violation of the FSF's copyright.

If you're talking about the text of the GPL itself, I'm not sure how much 
copyright protection it actually has.  I would have assume the normal 
amount, but I've been reading some of the amicus briefs to the Supreme 
Court in the Eldred copyriht case, and the point was mentioned that while a 
judge may write a very expressive judicial opinion, it is NOT protected by 
copyright because the public interest in knowing the laws and precedents 
that bind them overrides the interest in protecting that expression.

That argument also seemed to suggest that legal contracts MIGHT have less
protection under copyright for similar reasons.  I don't know if that's 
true or not, but a lot of "boilerplate" legalese gets reused word-for-word 
in contract after contract; is it fair use?  Are biolerplate clauses used 
pursuant to some sort of license?  Are they unprotected by copyright in the 
first place?  I don't know, but it's an interesting question, especially 
for a case like the GPL where the public at large is a "party" to the GPL, 
in a sense...

> How about limiting the number of copies an individual may distribute without
> authorization (1 per week, 1 per month)?

I'm not sure.  That doesn't sound very effective.  I think the evaluation 
idea makes more sense, offhand.

> > It's also unlikely for copyright law to be modified to demand source like 
> > he wants, so I don't see that happening either.
> 
> I'm not so sure.  Patent laws require filing full details of how a 
> patented device works.  I could see making it mandatory to file source 
> code in order to receive copyright protection.

I suppose an argument could be made.  That could be an interesting public 
debate, on that topic.  Certainly, if the copyright expires, but only the 
binary copies still exist, it's of very limited value...

As for patents, they often omit key points, even though they're not 
supposed to.  I've heard it's sometimes necessary to reverse-engineer 
whatever they left out, if you try to implement something from the patent 
alone.  (In theory, it should be straightforward, but supposedly it's not.)

> > However, [reducing copyright length] is an uphill battle against 
> > powerful entrenched interests, so it's hard to win this one.  
> 
> Which is probably the FSF's justification for such a hard-line,
> take-no-prisioners approach.

Perhaps, but it also makes them a lot of unnecessary enemies.

> > Is [switching from BSD to GPL] a trend?  Maybe due to the influence of GPL 
> > advocates, in part?
> 
> I'm not sure how stong a trend it is.  But I do think it is strongly due 
> to the influence of GPL advocates.

Probably.

Deven