On Mon, 2003-12-08 at 23:25, Exile In Paradise wrote: > Public domain means everyone OWNS it. That is most specifically > EXCLUDED from open-source and GNU Free-ish licensing. The > presence of licenses > and/or copyrights only demonstrates that fact concretely. Public domain means nobody owns it, but thinking of property is starting from the wrong point of view. << Collecting data is only the first step toward wisdom. But sharing data is the first step toward a community. >> Free Software uses frequently Copyright laws toward a community, that is, it frequently imposes on the (re)distributer the duty to keep the software Free. That is most evident in the GNU GPL, and what is known as Copyleft. The fact that there is an owner in the Free Software world is a mere technicality in a Copyright covered world, and in practice everyone "owns" the shared knowledge. The owners only usually exerce legally their rights when they want their software to be Free Software for everyone and some companies try to take those freedoms from common users (for instance, all that blurb between the Linux developers and many devices that include a trimmed version of the GNU/Linux operating system). With public domain it's different. In some countries you can take something out of public domain in certain conditions, hence you could loose freedom (I think this is not really possible in the USA, bt ask a lawyer if you're unsure). > While I applaud both open-source and the GNU-Free-ish movements as a > leveraging effort to improve software in general by keeping it from > vanishing behind closed doors, I still have to lament the death of the > public domain as everyone moves forward to support political (open > source, GNU freeish) or economic (closed source) ends using IP as the > battleground. Remember that Free Software becomes public domain at the time Copyright says so, just like any non-Free software. However, with Free Software you don't have to hope your grandsons might be able to use or not some work in a new creative way. You yourself can do it right now. Hugs, Rui -- + No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown + Whatever you do will be insignificant, | but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi + So let's do it...? Please AVOID sending me WORD, EXCEL or POWERPOINT attachments. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
