Re: FSF's position on shorter copyrights (was Re: Economics and the GPL)

On Wed, 19 Jun 2002, Matt Seitz wrote:

> "Deven T. Corzine" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> > On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, Roger Fujii wrote:
> 
> Actually, I wrote the following:
> 
> > > > *For example, see http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/eldred-amicus.html,
> > > > http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.html
> 
> Roger Fujii then wrote:
> > > 
> > > It's unclear that they *truely* would support such a move, as a relatively
> > > short copyright would undermine the GPL.  
> 
> And then Deven T. Corzine wrote:
> >  (Now, whether or not 
> > the FSF would actually prefer shorter copyrights, that's another question.)
> 
> Is there any reason to suspect the FSF is lying, other than our speculation
> regarding how shorter copyright would reduce the ability of the GPL to keep
> code out of closed-source software?

I didn't claim they're lying.  I haven't read those links yet, so I wasn't 
prepared to comment on their veracity.  I was merely disputing the point 
that arguing for shorter copyrights would be inherently inconsistent with 
the FSF's goals or behavior, somehow...

I'm sure that if a reduced copyright term allows GPL code to be eventually 
incorporated into proprietary products, Stallman may not be thrilled with 
that, but he can console himself with the fact that it cuts both ways, and 
proprietary code could be reused in new GPL works just as quickly.

Deven