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To: Mitch Blevins who wrote (1918)	12/10/1999 12:11:00 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Respond to of 2615

Mitch, good explanation. I simply think of gpl as a way that someone can place something in the public domain and grant use to anyone and say hey you can't take this and tweak it and make your own private thing. You can take, say I got it here, I made it better and you can take mine along with his and use it the same way. I'd say the written score of music along with the words could be gpl'd as the license is an expression of intent of freedom of use. But the execution of modification would be clumsy. hmmm is that what you said :-) I got to listen to Eric Raymond in person. It was three or four hours. I just wish I had taped it. I recommend if you have the op to go and listen. Very stimulating. But the analysis of the economics of open source give great insights in to how the market works. Knowing how the market works is the key to identifying what stock will work. Tom Watson tosiwmee

To: Mitch Blevins who wrote (1918)	12/11/1999 12:52:00 AM
From: JC Jaros	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2615

Hi Mitch. That was a nice post. Yeah, I somewhat set up a strawman there, but it began after reading one too many yammerings about 'licenses' coming from community enthusiasts, specifically Bruce Perens going off on the SCSL one place and justifying himself elsewhere using the rhetoric of RHAT stock price. I want to offer up an argument to the RHAT stock price in the form of this question of Public Domain. PD works and has a long tradition in both folk music and software. I'd like to know where John Perry Barlow comes down on this. --Regarding the concert stenographer; don't get me started. You've already got me thinking of a trinary arrangement where 'folk' music could be performed and consumed in a single experience (quantum folk music <g>). I didn't say all software should be public domain. Probably most software we deal with directly should. Otherwise the other traditional 'profit motive' is cooperatively addressed in the SCSL. I guess what I'm saying is between PD and SCSL (or similar), GPL is kinda redundant. Why is 'copyright' all that important? Most of the crap that's copyrighted shouldn't be. How does copyright encourage the production of anything? I watched software weave it's way into US Code 17 (Copyright) over the years, and it's treated pretty much like music. The difference is each programmer feels compelled to paste a long laundry list of (usually unenforcable) TERMS into readme file. Why? I don't know. I go buy music CD, I don't have to wade through all of that. Why do programmers feel they need to strike out into new Uniform Commercial Code territory every time they write a program? Why is 'increased production' neccessary? I think all software should come with source code. I've thought that (and lived it) back when 'open source' was plain ol' freeware, and we wouldn't even *consider a BBS program that didn't come with the source code. It was after all, practically an operating system in itself. Hey there's an example (and I'm sure there's more than one); Telegard BBS was WWIV BBS after 'folk process'. Actually STEALING code has a much richer history in encouraging production. The Perl license is cool. You don't have to read about it all the time and worry about compliance. What's wrong with the Perl license? :) -JCJ

To: Mitch Blevins who wrote (1918)	12/14/1999 12:12:00 AM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2615

Good talk on GPL and public domain. It shows you understand the subject. So, Boy Genius, how do you propose that shareware software writers get paid for their product? Because, as of now, none of them have made one red cent for their decidedly superior work and Microsoft which makes mostly crap, with few exceptions, has made 100 billion? I am just being provocative here because the question occurred to me, and nobody has answered it. I suppose you could say people will not pay if they don't have to. The other side of the coin is, if all software is charged for, there is too much that you actually need to be able to pay for it all. Can you imagine buying all the shareware in the Tucows site? It would cost you about 100,000 dollars and you would still need a few utilities. But you cannot sell a program for fifty cents. I don't think they will sell them for ten bucks either, although they would probably make a lot more money if they did. The fools. The Wise One. EC<:-}