On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 03:26:06PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: > On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 3:33 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn <[email protected]> wrote: > > Felipe Contreras wrote at 00:52 (EDT): > >> I'm talking about rights. As a user, I don't have any rights, only > >> privileges granted by the developer. > > > > This is where I disagree, in principle. While you're technically > > correct that the "rights" of copyright law stay with the copyright > > holder, the GPL is clearly designed to pass rights and privileges > > along to each who receives distribution. > > It doesn't matter how the GPL was designed, the GPL doesn't have > precedence over the law, and the law doesn't allow a software license > to change the nature of copyright law.
The law does not define rights in any philosophical sense. For those who believe in rights, they are something that exist prior to the law, or evolving independently of law, and which law ideally serves to protect but often instead infringes. The philosophy behind the GPL, whether you agree or disagree with it, is that individuals have fundamental rights to tinker, learn, share their knowledge, use their knowledge, etc. as long as they don't infringe on others' rights, and that nobody has a right to hoard knowledge or apply the concepts of property to it. That's highly paraphrased based on my own interpretation and beliefs because I don't intend to sound like somebody regurgitating FSF talking points. Rich _______________________________________________ busybox mailing list [email protected] http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
