[sword-devel] Still more about licencing

[Derek Neighbors]

Lynn Allan said:

> Although admittedly uninformed, I have never been a fan of the GPL. I am
> a strong believer in copyright, intellectual property, and property
> rights. I believe the USA founding fathers knew what they were doing
> when they established the Copyright Office. Was it specified in the
> Constitution?

Certainly you are uniformed.  The GPL **RELIES** on copyright in order to
be enforced.  Therefore Mr. Stallman is a believer in Copyright as well,
otherwise his license wouldn't be valid.

Intellectually property is a straw term.  It holds no weight.  There is no
law about Intellectual Property as a whole. If you want to debate this
stuff call it out specifically.  IP is too general it can range from
non-disclosure, to trademark, to copyright, to non-compete, to patent law
and everything in between.  The only thing worth debating in the licensing
is copyright.

Lastly,  property rights (physical) are very different than property
rights (intellectual).  Since you are a firm believer that the original
framers had it right, please go read Jefferson's writings on property
rights (non physical).  His analogy is that of a candle and flame.

If I steal you car.  You have no car.  If I have a candle but no flame. 
You have a candle with a flame.  I light my candle from your candles
flame.  Yes I have a flame I did not before, but has your candle lost its
flame?  Therefore how we treat the two should be separate.

Also, note original copyright was 17 years (or somewhere there abouts). 
Now copyright is as long as Disney is willing to lobby to extend it.

> I tend to feel the net result of Richard Stallman's well intended
> "copyleft" is anti-intellectual.

That is of debate.  Many (especially in science circles) find your
analysis contrary.  If we are open to debate things more people can
improve them.  If you wante to call his "copyleft", anti-capitalistic or
pro-socialist, I would be more inclined to agree.  However I think the
licensing philosophy breeds innovation rather than stifles it.

> I would probably prefer to release LcdBible and the InVerse Scripture
> memorization freeware to the Public Domain than use the GPL as it seems
> to be understood on The SWORD Project.

If you just use the libraries I see no reason why you couldn't make your
code BSD.  Which is in many ways as close to public domain as it gets.

-Derek