[Mandrakeot] ESR gives up on Fedora

Lyvim Xaphir knightmerc at yahoo.com
Sat Feb 24 10:58:32 UTC 2007


On Fri, 2007-02-23 at 11:46 +0100, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 23, 2007 at 04:39:16AM -0500, Lyvim Xaphir wrote:
> > 
> > NOT if the intellectual property was produced by work that was not
> > freely given.  If the programmer creates original product (IP) thru
> > his/her own effort and work, then that person has the right to the
> > fruits of that labor.  This is basic and not hard to understand.
> 
> The fact that freely available non rival goods maximize welfare
> is also easy to understand.

Once again, I don't disagree.  But the difference is wether the
intellectual property was freely given or not.  We have all seen freely
given intellectual property maximize the general welfare, but that's not
the issue here.

If you are advocating stealing intellectual property for the general
welfare, then that's clearly criminal.  Truthfully I don't think you are
or would advocate such a thing, but there are those here who are.


>  So here there is clearly a possible
> opposition on normative issues. The political/ideological issue is 
> on how to balance the freedom to license against welfare maximisation 
> since both principles are antagonist in the case of non rival goods.

Which is simple enough; the freedom to license lies with the authors of
the work.  Period.  Any attempt to remove that right or force licensing
on the authors of the work is a criminal action against the authors.

> > Which I agree with in principle, with that statement taken by itself;
> > but you are discussing a different type of regulation.  The situation
> > I'm concerned with is when the programmer wishes to profit from his
> > work; which is a form of regulation, but again I don't think that's what
> > you mean here.
> 
> Indeed, what I call regulation here is what is commonly understood in 
> the field of social choice economy. It is the action of a collective
> body to set rules.

Setting rules and forcing rules on others is two entirely different
things.  I'm concerned with the latter (and I give you the benefit of
the doubt that you are only talking about the former.)

> 
> > My point is that if the person originates the work, then they
> > automatically have the rights to that work, and as such they also have
> > the intrinsic right to license it any way they like.  It's their work.
> > It's their right. This right is forcibly taken from them in the case of
> > forced licensing, which is presently occurring within the context of a
> > false-freedom ideology.
> 
> You are saying that freedom to keep rights on intelectual production 
> is the highest principle (above welfare maximization, at least). That's
> a view, but other people may disagree. I am not stating my personnal view
> here, just explaining that a way to understand this opposition is to 
> state it that way.

I understand.  But...the assumption you start from in the above
paragraph is that it's an EITHER OR situation with regard to
intellectual production "rights".  It's not.  The current IT universe is
diverse and today we have freely given intellectual property which is
under the jurisdiction of the GPL, and we also have other
differently-licensed intellectual properties which work together with
the GPL properties.  There's a wide variety of rights available.  Within
a _current status quo there will ALWAYS be freely-given intellectual
production _and_ profit-oriented intellectual production.  Currently
they work together fine, and the MARKET is the deciding factor about
what is used and what is not used.  We have different people, different
organizations and different financial needs all being served by
different licensing solutions.

  The criminal action comes in when a self-appointed closed ideological
group attempts to force their licensing scheme on others against their
will by virtue of their level of control over the kernel.  When THEY
think THEY can unilaterally decide what is right or wrong (taking that
decision away from the great unwashed, the users, the Market).  As I've
stated before, such criminal actions are consequences of socialism.

Kernel development should be strictly within the domain of technical
dominion, and should have nothing to do with ideology.  Ideology is the
purview of the user.  That has been the key to Ubuntu's success; they
understand that principle.  They trust the users to make the correct
decisions.

If the developers want to write code under the authority of technical
merit, fine.  If they want to march up and down the roads in black robes
as the New Flagellants, beating themselves with chains and cursing the
dissenters and the New Jews, that's fine too.  But PICK ONE.

> > > Currently ideas cannot be protected, 
> > 
> > 
> > This is your view and in my view it's false.  There are consequences
> > today for stealing intellectual property and many people have felt the
> > legal brunt of those consequences.  I don't agree with things like the
> 
> Ideas, knowledge cannot be protected.

(grin)  You keep saying that and I will keep disagreeing. :)  I'm
telling you that there are people in jail now for violation of
intellectual property law.  Perhaps we should extend the discussion to
the nature of protection?  If we both decide that protection is possible
at the point of a gun, then we both agree that indeed intellectual
property is indeed being protected today as we speak.


>  Reusing knowledge and ideas cannot be prosecuted.

Galileo would disagree with you.  As would a number of other prominent
individuals living (or dying) during the Enlightenment.

>  The fields of intellectual property are innovation
> (through patents), trademark, copyright (for art and software
> representations), commercial secrets. Exceptions are entering now and 
> then (like genetic codes, software patents that may protect some ideas 
> that are not really innovations, informations stored in database), 

The genetics I DO NOT agree with.  Genetics represents already-existant
information (prior to the genesis of human technology) and therefore has
not been authored by an individual; so to me the copyright of an
existing gene should be rendered criminal.  The processes in the probing
and manipulation of genes are rightfully intellectual property, but the
genomes themselves should be considered outside that domain.  They are
already "owned", in a sense, and do not represent work involved in their
creation by humanity.  You could almost say that they were already
there, were freely given, and now should be under a sort of "genetic
GPL" license.

The creation of a new gene would be rightfully considered intellectual
property.

Clearly there are abuses of intellectual property licensing.  My
position is that abuses are occurring in not just one arena, but also in
increasingly socio-fascist sectors of the IT world.  Forced licensing is
definitely an abuse and an affront to real freedom.  It's just as
criminal as patenting a part of the human genome.



> but basically all you read in a book cannot be protected by the book 
> author. The copyright protects the wording, not the ideas.
> 
> --
> Pat

If a man's patent holds for a number of years on his ideas for a
successful invention, then no matter what the interpretations may be,
his ideas have been protected and he profits from that successful
invention.  The synopsis is that his ideas were protected from others
for fear of lawsuit or criminal prosecution.


LX
-- 

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
A Kernel Of Socialism

greatunwashed: module license 'great_unwashed' taints kernel.
ich: no version for "unwashed_register_device" found: kernel tainted.
Symbol usb_register_driver is being used by a non-GPL module,
which will not be allowed in the future
Please see the file Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt
in the kernel source tree for more details.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°




More information about the devel mailing list