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On Sunday 08 January 2006 3:21 pm, Grant Sewell wrote: > > > People only value things when they have to pay (time, money) for them > > > > or can understand the benefits. > > > > Sharing is it's own reward. This needs to be our message, loud and clear. > > Sharing is the right thing to do and is inherently beneficial for > > everyone. Sharing requires freedom, sharing reinforces freedom and > > sharing benefits freedom. The problem is that in commercial / business > > environments sharing can be frequently seen as anti-capitalist, socialist > > or simply impossible. Those are the barriers we need to break down - > > philosophical and political, not financial. The business case for free > > software is grounded in sharing. > > > > Let's talk more about freedom and sharing - let's talk about what makes > > our community work. People willing to share their time and effort for > > little or no monetary reward, in order to help others, to respect the > > people who shared their time and effort before them and to build sharing > > and freedom into the future for the benefit of all. > > > > I'd sum up the entire GNU message in one line: > > > > You deserve free software and everyone deserves the right to share it > > with you, now and for the future. > > I hope you don't mind, but I'm seriously thinking about using large parts > of that in my OS classes. No problem! I don't mind one jot. There's a deeper issue here too. It's a public archive, we all have copyright on our own content in that archive because copyright is granted automatically upon publication. Copyright only requires that the copyright holder consents, that the source is acknowledged and modifications are noted. i.e. copyright is a bargain between the author and the public that is intended to prevent others passing-off the copied content as their own. The act of sending to a publicly archived mailing list includes implicit permission for that content to be archived publicly with appropriate listing of the source. If we converse privately, off-list, then it is incumbent on you to seek permission to reproduce that content to anyone else. When the content is already public, nobody can seriously expect to refuse permission for that content to be reproduced. After all, Google does not ask (nor need to ask) for the permission of each subscriber to index the DCGLUG archive. Indexing includes the act of copying at least some, if not most, of the content. That said, I was only able to write that content by using the content of others and putting it into my own words. You are free to do the same and it is only proper that others are allowed the freedom to do the same with your own content. (Anything less is pure selfishness and/or elitism.) Apply that lesson to music and you get into hot water. Copyright (as originally created) does not make copying itself illegal. Copyright merely requires that such copies are clearly attributed and have the consent of the copyright holder. Copyright has been extended by various means but, in the absence of the magic words "All Rights Reserved" or other licencing, copyright does NOT prohibit copying. It is the licence that follows the copyright notice that determines the permissions. Copyright law is defined around "the consent of the copyright holder" within the duration of copyright protection. With the consent of the copyright holder, any copyrighted content can be reproduced ad nauseam. I suppose I could put a statement in the welcome email, but (for members who joined in the last year or two) this already highlights the public nature of the mailing list archive. In general, subscribers should consider their mailing list posts as their own copyright (because it is published) with permission implicitly granted to anyone to copy, redistribute and modify as long as the original copyright holder(s) are acknowledged. This is usually done by your email client in the first line of the reply. There's a basic introduction to UK copyright law via the Patent Office (!) http://copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law The full title is Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Some of that content is deliberately written from the perspective of the selfish (well it is allied to the Patent Office!): "Probably the best starting place is to think from the point of view of withholding all rights and then carefully word any allowances as exceptions, making sure it is clear that these are the only allowances you will make." http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p03_copyright_notices Wrong! That's not a sharing attitude. The GNU way is: Think from the point of view of granting all rights and then carefully word any restrictions as exceptions, making absolutely sure that only those specific restrictions are affected. Better still, use a free licence and leave it at that. (I'll leave the discussion of whether the GNU FDL is free or not to a later date!) -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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