Re: copyleft (was: Re: Owning a piece of my mind)

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    The copyright or copyleft on General Public Licensed works
    is a standard copyright.  However, the license must be
    adhered to, else the user has no rights to redistribute the
    work (with restrictions) or reuse it.

Yes, that is a consequence of copyright law.

					   Thus it is a sort
    of shrinkwrap license, similar to the ones that UCITA
    intends to enforce in some states.

No, it is not a shrink wrap license, nothing like that.  You've got
the picture entirely wrong.  Shrink wrap licenses are based on the
claim that the user has agreed to a contract by acquiring a copy.  The
GPL does NOT claim that the user has agreed to any sort of contract by
acquiring a copy.

      The GPL allows
    redistributing the work only under certain conditions.
    Thus it "infects" the work being distributed

This is based on a misunderstanding of the way the GPL works.
Actually, the situation is much simpler: my choice of the GPL affects
what you do with your program if it includes a substantial amount of
my code.

    But it became clear that there were some who believed in
    some sort of "strict" interpretation of the GPL that
    favored "freedom" in the sense of "free beer" rather than
    in the sense of the First Amendment, and that demonstrated
    quite an antagonism toward software manufacturers who
    dared ask for money for their work.  Others, such as
    Eric S. Raymond, are more concerned that Linux and other
    Open Source (tm) software gain some market momentum, with
    the aid of corporations such as Corel, and do not wish
    needlessly to antagonize corporate partners.

These two groups are not the only ones: we who launched the
development of the GNU/Linux system have a different view.  We are
concerned with free software, free in the sense of freedom; we welcome
corporations when they respect and support our freedom, and we oppose
them when they try to separate people from their freedom.
When corporations help us work for freedom, we are happy to see
them make money, and we don't want to antagonize them.
But when corporations add non-free software to GNU/Linux,
spoiling its free status, they are not helping us and we do not
hesitate to say so.  As for market momentum, that is a side issue.