The Free Software Act (Groklaw) [LWN.net]

The Free Software Act (Groklaw)

Posted Dec 23, 2003 15:00 UTC (Tue) by rjw (guest, #10415)
In reply to: The Free Software Act (Groklaw) by petegn
Parent article: The Free Software Act (Groklaw)

How on earth would this work?

All that would happen is that anyone who wanted to release something under a permissive ( LGPL or BSD style) licence would still be able to make a universal grant to proprietary authors.

Or do you think that it should actually be illegal for me to allow others to use my work as I see fit? I should be banned from not suing for copyright infringement/ free software act violation? Seems ridiculously onerous on both author and the public. So I doubt that would work.

So these things would end up dual licence BSD/GPL or LGPL/GPL, which has the same effect as BSD or LGPL alone.

A far more useful set of laws for the progress of Free Software would be this:
* Revoke the DMCA and EUCD.
* Get rid of software patents, or instate a universal patent grant to Free Software.
* Give all users of proprietary software systems the right to demand royalty free specifications for formats and protocols used by those systems, and the ability to benchmark those systems.
* Set up an authority to pursue slander and libel claims on behalf of Free Software authors, and to defend Free Software authors from legal harassment.
* Require government departments to use Free Software for all functions that it can perform, and for all functions that it can not, to contribute an equal sum to the development of a Free alternative as it pays in proprietary licence fees/ developer salary.

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