Disney goes for free software in which manner ? [LWN.net]

Disney goes for free software in which manner ?

Posted Jun 20, 2002 8:18 UTC (Thu) by copsewood (subscriber, #199)
Parent article: Disney goes for Linux

Historically certain freedoms have, in some circumstances, had to be temporarily withdrawn in order to be effectively defended. In order to win the 2nd World War against Hitler, in the UK various democratic freedoms had to be temporarily suspended in 1939 and reinstated in 1945. I think the free-software movement may need to face attacks such as the CBDTPA in a similar way. For example a GPL version 3 may be needed to withdraw the right to use software by companies activily supporting repressive anti-free software legislation, or pursuing software patent claims against other users of free software. When this war is effectively won, a GPL version 4 could reinstate freedoms temporarily suspended for the duration of conflict e.g. the freedom to use free software while attacking software freedoms of others.

The dilemma of whether people who attack freedom can also enjoy it is an old one, and I think historically this tends to hinge around 2 criteria:

Whether a state of war exists between them and the free world and
whether allowing the adversary to operate in conditions of freedom compromises the ability of the free world to defeat them.

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Disney goes for free software in which manner ?

Posted Jun 20, 2002 10:25 UTC (Thu) by DeletedUser2169 ((unknown), #2169) [Link]

To compare the "withdrawal" of democratic rights is different because they were not withdrawn they were suspended with democratic consent. No change to the over all legal system occured in the same way as the various US acts strip previously available actions with no expiration expected.

Disney goes for free software in which manner ?

Posted Jun 20, 2002 10:44 UTC (Thu) by Trav (guest, #2170) [Link]

> For example a GPL version 3 may be needed to withdraw the right to use
> software by companies activily supporting repressive anti-free software
> legislation, or pursuing software patent claims against other users of
> free software

[companies activily supporting]: Who would judge that? Thats too fuzzy for
a license.

[patent claims against users of free software]: I suppose there is no
single company or indiviual that does not use free software in some way.
Would this make an end to all patent suits? No. Large companies could
simply create small companies for the only purpose to use the software
in Question on their data for a fee.

Software covered by such a license would no longer be part of debian, since
it discriminates against fields of endeavour.

Disney goes for free software in which manner ?

Posted Jun 20, 2002 13:56 UTC (Thu) by erat (guest, #21) [Link]

There are two serious flaws in your proposal:

1) As someone else stated already, what entity would be designated to determine who is "oppressing" free software? Even if there are very specific criteria for determining who's in and who's out, there will still be enough rope to allow the RMSes of the world to hang those companies that they simply don't like. I can envision this ending Linux's wave of popularity quickly, as well as scaring off literally almost all of the corporate users.

2) A GPL 3, 4, 50, whatever could be created, but software that is covered by GPL 2.0 will remain covered by GPL 2.0 until the folks producing the software decide to change. If the GPL is changed to be more restrictive than it already is, lots of code covered under it will more likely than not fork, leaving the GPL 2.0'd version for the free software community and licensing the new fork differently. If you own the copyright, I believe you can do that. It's not nice, but I believe it can happen (look at SourceForge).