> Most of us only put up with the GPL because we need it in an environment > of copyrights to maintain our software freedom. If there were no such > thing as copyrights most of us in the software world would probably be > happier and would happily give up the GPL.
T. Well put! I like what Prof. Lawrence Lessig said at OSCON when someone asked him if he thought the GPL was extreme. He said that it wasn't the GPL that was extreme, rather, it was the surrounding environment that was extreme. Sure, abolishing the copyright system would make the GPL unnecessary. You don't even have to go that far....if software copyrights *aged* in Internet years (i.e. software went into public domain much sooner) that would also make GPL less important. Even if copyright law *just* did not restrict *derivative works* so strongly, that would make the GPL less important. (If this idea sounds strange...would you believe that in pre-Civil War America copyright gave NO protection against derivative works? It was a "GPL world" back then and hence a GPL was unnecessary!) Chris -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
