Alex Fernández wrote:
> I read 12 fallacies and flaws in 5 sentences:
> 06- "in the public domain" was the term used 20 years ago for open
> source. Not useful any more.
Not entirely accurate. Public Domain is a copyright law term referring to a
published work where the copyright has expired OR the author chose to waive
their copyright. While it is true that there were several freely available
source code distributions that were in the public domain, but they had no
protection.
A work in the public domain cannot have any license or protection under the
law. This means anyone can use the work, and make dirivitive works on it
without consequence or ramifications. It also means that you can strip the
original author's name from the source code and put your own there--nothing
the author can do.
Open Source Software does NOT waive the copyright priviledges, nor does it
waive the ability to publish the work with a license. The reason Open Source
Software came into existence is to have all the advantages of Public Domain,
without the disadvantages. People _like_ ensuring they get the recognition
for good code.
Richard Stallman's rendition of Open Source is Free Software. This notion
is separate and distinct from *both* Open Source AND Public Domain. He does
have a rather socialistic view on software as a whole, despite his denial of
such. The GPL is not compatible with a number of Open Source licenses that
seek to protect Recognition of the author or organization that produced the
software (read Apache Software License and original BSD license). To me
this is bad.
> 08 - "Linux is not in the public domain", so what? Straw man forever.
This statement is never truer. Linux is not public domain, it is protected
by copyright law, as well as the GPL distribution license. All licenses have
a price--though not always measured in money.
> 12 - Kant's Golden Rule -- suppose everyone does what Ballmer tells us
> is so bad, use GPL licences, do you see any bad consequence for mankind?
> What would it be?
If everything were GPL, nothing would be in violation of GPL. All software
would have source code available. These are good things. The bad is when
you mix software with different licenses. That is where conflict arrises.
Because the GPL is purposely vague in key terminology such as what is a
"derivative work", there is a legitimate perception that any code that uses
GPL code either as a basis, or as a plug-in would force the license to change.
IMO this is not the best of all worlds. I appreciate Richard Stallman's goals,
and his desire to see all software free (according to his definition). However,
there are other tools beside the GPL that ensure open software that is compatible
with commercial licensing (read Apache Software License and original BSD license).
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