From: mcguire@cs.utexas.edu (Tommy Marcus McGuire) Subject: Re: Recent GPL interpretations and Linux Date: 14 Jul 1993 12:54:07 -0500
In article <1993Jul14.021051.21866@ksmith.com> keith@ksmith.com (Keith Smith) writes:
[...]
>No basically we are talking common sense here. Suppose I produce a
>pencil and GIVE it to you with the restriction that anything you WRITE
>with that pencil must be given away also.
I could make a comment about common sense and intellectual property
law, but I'm not going to. The problem with comparing intellectual
property with physical things, like pencils and bearings, is that the
physical objects have more restrictions on their production, like the
requirement for raw materials. Unless you've invented a way to clone
a pencil without involving trees, that is.
The properties of the property are different, so the laws are, too.
>I can _do_ it but no court anywhere is gonna hold to the notion that
>just because I gave you a pencil, that the poetry you write with it must
>be given away too.
What if you give me $10,000 for pencils and other office supplies under
the agreement that everything I write with that stuff is given away? A
contract is a contract, after all. The only difference between the two
examples is the quantity of the compensation.
>When it comes to things like program development
>tools and libraries this crap will _never_ hold water. The code in libc
>was produced with the express purpose of being included/used in another
>work, and then GIVEN AWAY. dumb, dumb, dumb.
^^^^^^^^^^
Huh? Nobody has given anything away.
You should probably tell those folks who write ads for proprietary
compilers this. They're wasting valuable ad space claiming that they
give you "royalty free runtime support." Let me restate that; its
important: They are _advertising_ that you can use include their
runtime libraries and environment in your product without paying them
royalties. That stipulation is part of the license you get when you
buy the compiler.
This is part of where physical property and intellectual property diverge.
The code in libc belongs to the people who hold the copyright on it, and
what you can do with it depends almost entirely on your agreement with
them. The fact that this puts limitations on what you can do with your
work, if it is derived from the other work, is exactly what intellectual
property laws are about.
[...]
>Keith Smith keith@ksmith.com 5719 Archer Rd.
[...]
=====
Tommy McGuire
mcguire@cs.utexas.edu
mcguire@austin.ibm.com
"...I will append an appropriate disclaimer to outgoing public information,
identifying it as personal and as independent of IBM...."