RE: [ba-unrev-talk] GPL: Socialist Agenda?
I think the comment was on Maloney's appeal to authority (Gosling) in
forwarding the snippet he did. (01)
I have never before heard the GPL referred to as part of a socialist agenda,
by the way. That attribution is no more appropriate to the Free Software
Foundation than assuming they have a libertarian agenda (though I would find
the latter more fitting). And I don't consider either you, Maloney or
Gosling to be political scientists, but would be happy to learn the degree
to which that is mistaken. IANAPS, of course. (02)
Side comment: I don't even believe that it is a Socialist position that
intellectual property is bad. It would be more likely, from an extreme
(i.e., not universal as far as I know) socialist view that labor is the only
true source of value (as opposed to capital and material resources), that
intellectual property belongs to the creators and not those who "exploit"
them. Lots of socialist states are signatories to international copyright
conventions and those versions are very protective of the rights of authors.
Communist models are certainly not averse to intellectual property, so long
it is the property of the state. So I actually can't figure out where that
particular piece of sloganeering comes from. Do you have any insight on
that? (03)
The GPL is based on intellectual property and the exclusive rights of
authors to control the disposition of their works, the subdivision of those
rights, etc. Like it or not (I prefer BSD-style open-source myself), it
doesn't do anything beyond what current copyright law already grants as the
exclusive rights of authors. (04)
It is commercial software firms and other holders of intellectual property
that want even more exclusive rights (clickthru-licensing, no reverse
engineering, no publishing of benchmark results, no critical review (!! --
the whole point of fair-use doctrine in the context of the First
Ammendment), no liability, the right to penetrate your system and remove
their software, the right to attack your system with no liability, etc.).
What political persuasion would you label that as? (05)
-- Dennis (06)
PS: Wow, I didn't know there was so much heat for me on this topic. Simmer
down, Dennis, you're blowing your pretense as a dispassionate observer (?)
... (07)
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org
[mailto:owner-ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org]On Behalf Of Eric Armstrong
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 14:52
To: ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org
Subject: Re: [ba-unrev-talk] GPL: Socialist Agenda? (08)
Teemu Leinonen wrote: (09)
> John Maloney wrote:
> > (James) Gosling: ... The GPL one is, I
> > find, rather odd because it has this string socialist agenda that
> > basically says intellectual property is bad.
>
> Appeal to Authority - Improper appeal to authority. (010)
On the contrary. (011)
Were the post to have said, "Gosling said so, therefore it must be true",
*that* would be an improper appeal to authority. (012)
In this post, however, Gosling was *cited*, and his reasoning was
given. I find it persuasive. (013)