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Re: [tlug] Proprietary derivatives of FLOSS and other absurdities [was: Why Hollywood does break foreign films ?]



On 2013-08-14 13:05 +0900 (Wed), Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> The purpose of copyleft is to ensure that free code remains free code,
> even after somebody else incorporates it in another program.

Err....no? I wasn't sure exactly what "copyleft" is, so I looked it up on
Wikipedia:

    Copyleft...is the practice of using copyright law to offer the right
    to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring
    that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work.

So more or less the same thing as the GPL, then? As I think we've all
agreed here before, the GPL is explicitly designed to *limit* the
freedoms you have (compared to something like a BSD or MIT license) with
regard to the GPL'd code.

This is the main reason I've come to like the GPL, its faux-freedom and
its associated popularity amongst the open-source crowd. When I put
my business hat on, it allows me to build products where I can give
out some part of the source, reaping the benefits of that, yet still
prevent any competitors from doing what I can do, which is distribute
proprietary, enhanced versions of the software based on that source.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson         <cjs@example.com>         +81 90 7737 2974

To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
    - L Peter Deutsch


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