Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 2, 2009 15:07 UTC (Tue) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
In reply to: Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions by nelljerram
Parent article: Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Free software does not depend on copyright. The *GPL* requires copyright to be enforceable--purely in order to subvert the negative effects of copyright law, of course--but there is much more to free software than just the GPL. The most obvious example would be software in the public domain, which obviously has no dependencies whatsoever on copyright law. A more common example would be BSD software, where the only requirements are attribution and retention of the original license notice, neither of which is essential to its classification as free software. Software under the MIT and similar licenses could likewise operate just fine in the absence of copyrights.

In any event, this isn't about enforcing or violating copyrights. This is about resisting the user's efforts to employ their documents in ways which they may well have every legal right to use them. An unobtrusive notice that restrictions were requested might be reasonable, but the purpose of software is to assist users in accomplishing their goals. Any software so perverted as to deliberately hinders its users is an abomination.

Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 2, 2009 21:29 UTC (Tue) by sepreece (guest, #19270) [Link] (4 responses)

"In any event, this isn't about enforcing or violating copyrights. This is about resisting the user's efforts to employ their documents in ways which they may well have every legal right to use them. An unobtrusive notice that restrictions were requested might be reasonable, but the purpose of software is to assist users in accomplishing their goals. Any software so perverted as to deliberately hinders its users is an abomination."

Well, what about the goals of the other users - the ones who wrote and distributed the documents? Their goals may well include, for instance, sending documents out for comment or distributing internal corporate documents that they don't want to see copied into rumor-site postings.

Sure, it's not a serious impediment to copying by people who want to do so, but at least you're making sure they know that they're violating the rules governing your distribution of the document. MANY documents are NOT subject to fair use, because they are distributed under other conditions, to which the user has agreed before receiving the document.

Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 3, 2009 18:06 UTC (Wed) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (3 responses)

"Well, what about the goals of the other users - the ones who wrote and distributed the documents?"

What about them? They're users of other software, not Okular. Okular should cater to the needs and wants of its own users. If others want to set these bits in documents they write, their authoring software should likewise allow them to do so.

As I said, it would be reasonable to passively inform the user that these bits are set. Describing the content of a document is, after all, Okular's primary purpose. It is the fact that Okular actively resists its users' obvious intent which I find objectionable. It goes against the entire spirit of Free Software, which is that users should have full control over the software they use.

Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 3, 2009 18:18 UTC (Wed) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] (2 responses)

"It is the fact that Okular actively resists its users' obvious intent
which I find objectionable."

What on earth are you talking about? Okular provides a toggle for the
user to express their intent, i.e. honor or ignore the copy restriction
flag, and honors the setting chosen by the user.

I hit this "problem" during my first day of using KDE4, which uses Okular.
I was confused for the approximately 5 seconds it took to read and
comprehend the greyed-out message, and then another 10 seconds to find and
toggle the setting. That's utterly trivial compared to, say, figuring out
how to make Gnome honor my intent as a user to respond to single
right-mouse clicks rather than double left-mouse clicks :-)

Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 3, 2009 19:25 UTC (Wed) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (1 responses)

I am aware of the toggle setting, which was cleverly hidden in a non-default page of the application settings dialog. The error message does not mention that this behavior can be disabled (short of editing the code), much less where to find the controls. It would be reasonable to assume that having gone out of their way to block such behavior the developers would make their restrictions as difficult as possible to circumvent; ergo, many wouldn't even go looking for such an option.

Furthermore, while you and I might not have any issues locating it without help, that would not be true for many of Okular's other users. A surprising number of computer users find themselves intimidated by standard configuration dialogs, and those unfamiliar with (or insecure in their knowledge regarding) software design could easily find themselves wondering whether disabling the restrictions might have unwanted, and possible irreversible, side-effects.

In short, the default assumption should be that users both know what they are doing and have all the necessary authority to do it, unless they deliberately disavow such knowledge or authority. On that basis, the default setting should have been to ignore any restriction requests present in the document, aside from possibly displaying them unobtrusively to the user.

"That's utterly trivial compared to, say, figuring out how to make Gnome honor my intent as a user to respond to single right-mouse clicks rather than double left-mouse clicks."

Perhaps so, but there is a world of difference between presenting a default interface which, while full-featured, may not match a specific user's preferences, and going out of one's way to completely disable standard functionality.

Okular, Debian, and copy restrictions

Posted Jun 3, 2009 22:22 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

It's reasonable to assume that if you're intimidated by complex
configuration dialogs, KDE is not the desktop for you :)