Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions [LWN.net]

Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 2, 2009 14:29 UTC (Tue) by rjdymond (subscriber, #51625)
In reply to: Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions by boudewijn
Parent article: Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

(And, of course, you should realize the complete equivalence of " Let the reader decide whether what the author demands is acceptable or not." and "Let the developer decide whether what the library author demands is acceptable or not", and that you have just given everyone a free pass on license violation of all the software you have ever written. If any.)

You seem to be saying that if I choose to ignore/violate the licence restrictions on somebody else's work, then I am (morally?) obligated to allow others to ignore/violate the licence restrictions on my own work(s). Which is entirely wrong, because it doesn't take the details of the licences into account. Whether violating licence A is as acceptable as violating licence B surely depends on those details. (And yes, the answer will be a matter of opinion, but that's beside the point.)

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Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 2, 2009 16:39 UTC (Tue) by rjdymond (subscriber, #51625) [Link]

Yes, I'm saying that you should behave unto others as you would like them to behave towards you.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, behaving unto others as you would like them to behave towards you (which is a good idea that I can agree with) does not imply abiding by someone else's licence because I expect them to abide by mine. To suggest it does is to render the fine phrase meaningless. To translate into the narrow realm of licences:

Yes: You should comply with the GPL (on somebody else's work) if you expect others to comply with the GPL (on your own work).

No: You should comply with an absurdly restrictive licence (on somebody else's work) if you expect others to comply with the GPL (on your own work).

Again, the devil is in the details (of the licences).

Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 2, 2009 18:59 UTC (Tue) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record...

No, your personal interpretation of the relative importance and
reasonableness of the restrictions imposed by a content creator aren't
absolute values. What you think is reasonable might be unreasonable in the
eyes of another. And you haven't got any right to force the other into
giving up their position. And that's the problem: you are demanding that
people who have a more reasonable position (by default we do the right
thing, but people can override that) than you give up that position.

Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 2, 2009 19:59 UTC (Tue) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

Take your own advice for a change. Even assuming we all agree that no one has the right to demand that another abandon their position, the reasonableness of applying restrictions by default is no less your *merely subjective opinion* than rjdymond's assessment that some licenses are more reasonably adhered to than others.

Personally, I think the entire discussion is pointless. Enforcing copyright claims through coercion is both immoral (IMHO, though that classification is far from arbitrary) and ineffectual, and claiming copyright sans coercion is simply ineffectual. Better to just accept reality and move on.

Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 2, 2009 16:54 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

I respect copyright and usage license. But what does this have to do with the technical limitation of the DRM bit?

Does it imply I'm allowed to freely distribute anything that is not protected by technical measures? Such as standard GPLed code?