Re: [tlug] Yes! Another argument about the GPL! You knew you wanted it....

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Curt Sampson writes:

 > However, let me be more precise here: you are demanding payment for
 > certain uses of your work.

I'm of two minds whether this is really true, except in the very
abstract sense that obeying any condition (such as standing on your
head while singing the latest hit by Linda Ronstadt) is "payment".

 > Specifically, should I chose to modify your program and distribute
 > it to others, I must give you (and others) certain fruits of my
 > labour that I would not have to give you if I wrote code that did
 > not interact with your software in this way.

This is definitely not true.  The GPL mandates "pay-forwards" (to the
recipient of your software), not pay-backs (to the authors).  And
"what goes around" does not always come back around.  For example, the
many improvements in XEmacs have never come back to Emacs (except in
the form of "hey, if XEmacs can do that, we can too", often ten years
later).[1]

So I would express this as "you are exercising your proprietary rights
to restrict my freedom," not as "you are demanding payment."

 > > > But, as Stephen points out, does this mean that the public has to pay
 > > > twice for your work in order to be able to do whatever they want with it?
 > > 
 > > That's exactly what that would avoid -- you fund it once, and then the
 > > work (and its derivatives) are freely available.

"Free" in the sense that "Humpty Dumpty" Stallman defines it.  But
even he admits that copyleft is a restriction on the freedom of the
recipient, envisioning that it will enhance the freedom of 3rd
parties.

And the assumption that "the derivatives" are available *at all*, let
alone "freely" so, is completely unjustified.

 > > I didn't say that. My point is actually similar to yours -- just
 > > because corporations pay taxes doesn't mean that they've funded the
 > > research they're profiting from.
 > 
 > If the research was funded by taxes, I fail to see how someone who paid
 > those taxes isn't funding that research.

Curt, he's right on this one.  The benefits to the firm are
disproportionate to the share of its taxes that go to funding the
research.

The real point here is that though the benefits are disproportionate,
it should not be considered a subsidy *to the developer* unless the
government grant program deliberately approved a particular research
proposal with reducing a particular firm's costs in mind.  If the firm
discovers the research *after* it is done, and realizes that
fortunately some of its planned development need not be done, that's
serendipity, not subsidy.

It is true that the research grant is a subsidy to that field, both
the basic researcher in academia and the commercial firms that develop
products based on her publications.  But it's also a subsidy to
customers.  For example, if the firms in the software industry are
perfectly competitive, *all* the benefits of the subsidy are passed
through to customers, not to the firms.  Even if the firm is a
monopoly, customers get a large share (about half, depending on demand
conditions) of the benefit of the subsidy.  And of course the research
project may fail, in which case the only benefit is to the researcher.

 > > I'm assuming that the additional research is small compared to the
 > > original research.

But that is the worst case!  If the additional contribution is
"large", then it is likely that some way will be found to work around
the barrier posed by the license (eg, "clean-room reimplementation").
But if the additional contribution is small, it will not be made.
This is why free software GUIs still suck compared to Aqua, and have
great trouble being better than Windows.  Despite having those two
wonderful examples to follow (one, how to do it, the other, how not to
do it, of course), making the effort involved in those little changes,
and subordinating one's own (excellent, of course!) taste to the mass
market are things volunteers don't do very well, and FSBs often can't
afford.


Footnotes: 
[1]  XEmacs is of course 100% GPL, v2 or later, and about 50%
FSF-owned.  But RMS doesn't want software he doesn't own 100% in the
GNU system.