From code war to Cold War (BBC)

From code war to Cold War (BBC)

> In other words, the only valid reason to have copyrights and
> other idea control mechanisms is for the benefit of the general
> public, through the generation of more works for their use. If
> the general public wants to give up fewer or none of their rights
> over works and accept the possibility that fewer works will be
> created, that is their choice alone, and not the choice of
> prospective copyright holders.

The safest way of guaranteeing the benefit of the general public,
in my view, is to incentivate through practice and through
legislation, whenever viable, the availability of a *rich public
domain*, no strings attached, period!

Unfortunately this point is being little addressed in the current
debates and controversies. As a matter of fact it seems that both
sides literally abhor the idea of a public domain where the
author looses his control about his creation. This might be a
rendering to the "world of bits" of the classic "Tragedy of the
Commons" critique, elaborated for the "world of atoms".

I would also like to add that I have my doubts about the escrow
schemes being proposed. If someone wants to hide his source code
he can transform it into something only slightly more
intelligible than binary code but which can be happily compiled
by a compiler. As far as I know Don Knuth made this (perhaps for
the first time?) in his Web computer system written to support
Literate Programming, about 20 years ago.

What is needed is a genuine wish to cooperate and to form a
community around the software and I do not see how these can be
easily guaranteed by legislation. Maybe more investment should be
made first in educating the public about the importance of these
aspects, even if they seem irrelevant for the majority of
individual users. At the same time it could be stressed how the
source code can help the formation of such communities. But the
source code alone is not sufficient for their formation.