Re: Ten years later

Frank Kotler wrote:

Doesn't do much of a job preserving the "Freedom of the Software". I've
got Nasm enslaved on my hard drive. I force it to do all sorts of
perverted things, and never give it any food or water (it gets a little
coffee sometimes :). If it escapes in some way, I'll only reinstall and
re-enslave it. I can force it to "reproduce" (derivative works), and
distribute the "children" to other slave owners - the GPL requires me to
make source code available. Nasm can be re-enslaved, so long as the
proper "papers" accompany it. Some protection! :)

You have a very strange definition of freedom and slavery. It's the
destination of software to serve the hardware (not only humans but
also animals and dead matter). And to let the software fulfill it's
destinations means to free it. So, to "use" a software in any way you
like is never the problem. But if you make an improvement to an
existing software (or write a completely new one) and imprison it on
your hard disk (or only distribute the binary), then you enslave the
software because then it can't fulfill it's destination.

Maybe you already have written an extension to NASM so it now also
accepts a well designed syntax (size of the operation paired with
the opcode and not with the operands, operands in "src,dest" order,
proper numbering of the register) but want to keep this improvements
only for you, then you would be guilty of enslaving of software.
And if you would release it as PD, then you also would be guilty.
Not because you enslaved it but because you allowed other to do so:
Everybody can add a further improvement and then distribute the binary
but imprison the source on their hard disk. If you had used the GPL,
this wouldn't be possible, everybody could profit from the new
improvements.

Knowledge has to be free (software is nothing but a form of knowledge).
And nobody should have the right to claim exclusive rights on knowledge.
If you don't want that other get the same knowledge as you, keep
it as your secret. But if knowledge is made public, then everybody
should be able to use this knowledge without any restrictions. Again:
patents are the biggest crime ever invented by a human brain. A nuke
is harmless compared to it.
.