[top-posting by way of preamble, apologies to others receiving this: thufir is someone whom i have interacted with in the past without achieving successful rational communication, on the gpl-violations mailing list]
ah, thufir, after a long time, you initiate a discussion (directly to me) for which i have no context. but i do recall distinctly that i had given up communicating with you because, from the previous conversations i deemed that you were unable to follow lengthy rational arguments, and, furthermore, that you had the unfortunate (and very common) psychological flaw of assuming personal affront and insult when presented even with rational and objective criticism. as there has been a long period since the last public conversations, i will give you the benefit of the doubt - once and only once - that you have since fixed these flaws in the way that you interact with others on the internet, but if i see even one indication that you have not you, i simply will not respond further. at all. i trust that this is clear, and i apologise for taking up everyone else's time with this lengthy preamble. On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 11:30 PM, thufir <hawat.thu...@gmail.com> wrote: > I don't get it, the pdf is at odds with Dr. Stallman and the FSF, if not in > specifics, at least in results and effects. as i have no context for these discussions, i performed a search on a specific phrase and noted this: https://github.com/dtag-dbu/oslic/blob/master/articles/oslic-reveng.tex i assume therefore that the PDF being discussed was generated from that latex source, and i assume also that my input is being solicited. i assume also, thufir, that you have read, understood, and agree that if 77 highly intelligent and prominent computer scientists - many of them having NOTHING TO DO WITH THE GPL - go to the extraordinary lengths of submitting an amicus brief against the copyrighting of APIs, that the issue of why copyrighting of APIs is extremely bad for the entire software industry and is a GENERAL PROBLEM NOT SPECIFIC TO THE GPL. i further assume that this is something that you now understand and accept, but if you do not, please do not ask me to explain it: i do not have time to explain what 77 experts in their field all agree on but that you have demonstrated in the past that you do not. in case you have not read that amicus brief of six months ago here is a copy: https://www.eff.org/files/2014/11/07/google_v_oracle_computer-scientists-certpetition-amicus-brief_14-410_final.pdf > The FSF, to the extent I was > able to get an official position from it, is all in favor of taking GPL'ed > API's, copying the declaring code, re-writing the implementation, and > slapping any old licence on the result. (Might be the ASL, or might not.) > > To emphasize: they don't just say it's ok, but actually encourage this. that is because it actually has nothing to do with the GPL, nor with the FSF. it could be any software license, and it could be any organisation, individual or corporation. the only reason why the FSF is speaking up is because they are supporting the principle concept of software freedom *in general*. most organisations and especially corporations do not speak up, even if they know that copyrighting of APIs is a serious problem, because they have decided that it is neither their vocation or in their best [usually financial or other short-term] interests to do so. > http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.law.gpl.violations.legal/4370 > > > So, that's the point. You might write what you like about the GPL and > reverse engineering, but the foundation behind the GPL has opened the door > on this. no it has not. from previous experience, you have a habit of being unable to discern between correlation and causation, and have shown a tendency to not be able to follow logical chains of reasoning. i believe you are making a similar mistake here, by using the phrase "has opened the door on this" in assuming that the development and release of the GPL is solely and exclusively responsible for why reverse-engineering is permitted. l. _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss