Where Freedom Ends and Privacy Begins · Tuesday July 17, 2007 by Crosbie Fitch
Scott Carpenter said 6400 days ago :
Briefly and stream-of-consciously, since I’m short on time, I’ve gathered that you support GPLv2 (although correct me if wrong), but I think some of what you say applies against it, also: who is to say that someone should have to distribute the source with their binaries, other than the power of copyright (which you would like to see abolished)?
I’d think you’d prefer the BSD family of licenses for putting less restrictions on the use of free software.
If I’m putting GPL software out there, it seems like a soft line between requiring redistributors to provide their modified source along with binaries, and requiring those who propagate the software via use over a network to do the same.
Just as using the GPL for traditionally distributed software is a choice, so would the new Affero licenses be choice and a way of requiring that all public uses of the software be free for others to study, modify, and distribute in turn. Still, we might be concerned about the side-effects of this new clause if it became popular.
Crosbie Fitch said 6400 days ago :
I actually support GPLv3, but would prefer to make three changes:
Equality
a) No distinction between consumers and non-consumers (whatever the heck ‘consumers’ are in the context of software rather than soap or spinach).
Privacy
b) No permission to re-license the code under the privacy violating AGPL
c) Permission to provide binaries without source as long as the binaries are free of charge.
But, that’s just the GPL.
In general, there’s no need for a law to compel publication of source code. People who purchase software in a world without copyright would naturally only be interested in purchasing the source code – since that is the software. Anyone can make a binary, and so there’s no point dragging people over hot coals because they distributed a binary without the source, even if they found some mug who happily paid for the binary. There’s certainly no sanction to prosecute someone or invade their premises merely for distributing a binary without source.
However, we still have copyright, and so I support copyleft licenses that nullify copyright (rather than merely neutralise it like the BSD), but I do wish the composers of such licences would recognise that there’s a lot more to life than liberty, and that truth and privacy must also be respected.
As for the BSD, well, it’s an abdication. It does not nullify copyright, it simply gives carte blanche to the licensee and let’s them decide how free their copies or derivatives will be.
I do not believe that giving the licensee the freedom to choose whether they suspend the liberty of their fellow men is much of an emancipating licence.
I’m more concerned with licences nullifying copyright and patent than harnessing their power to force people to disclose their source code.
You say “all public uses of the software be free for others to study, modify, and distribute in turn”. Who or what are you trying to liberate here? The source code or the people? You’ve got to get that straight.
Remember, “Free as in ‘free speech’, not as in ‘free beer’”. Moreover, it’s not the speech that is liberated here, but the speaker. I’m dismayed by the number of people who interpret ‘Free Software’ in the same sense as ‘Free Men’ or ‘Free Nelson Mandela’. It is software free of constraint upon the possessor’s liberty. It is software with a licence that restores the public’s liberty suspended by copyright and patent. It isn’t supposed to enable the public to violate each other’s privacy in order to seize what they covet.
Freedom of speech does not sanction an audience to seize the unpublished notes and drafts of the speaker, merely because they’d help them understand the speech a little better. Freedom means that once you’ve bought these notes you’re free to study, modify and distribute them, it doesn’t mean you should get them free of charge or be able to violate the speaker’s privacy in order to take them.
It is just this idea that source code must be compulsorily disclosed that has spawned the Affero GPL variant.
When source code visibility is seen as a prime objective (overriding any consideration for the human right to privacy), then you get people believing it is the source code that they’re liberating and not the public from the shackles of copyright and patent. That’s the point at which the unethical constraints of copyright can no longer be nullified, but are harnessed toward the unethical pursuit of source code visibility. Copyright’s power evidently corrupts. The apparent goodness of source code visibility (achieved compulsorily, without compensation) is evidently too tempting to resist copyright’s unethical reach into the private domain to seize it.
If you want what I have not published, pay for it. You have no right to seize it. Once you’ve purchased it, I have no right to tell you what you may or may not do with it.
Scott Carpenter thoughtfully picked me up on my tangential drift yesterday into the ‘freedom to modify’ vs ‘right to privacy’ encounter.
Scott, ‘free to reuse’ can easily drift into an ‘entitlement to reuse’ and then a ‘right to reuse’ and ultimately a prohibition1 against non-disclosure of source materials to works published or publicly exploitable (non-disclosure from within the natural enclosure of the private domain).
This is why the dogmatic pursuit of Stallman’s ‘four freedoms’ is so dangerous. It elevates the liberties and property rights suspended by copyright and patent as more than things to be restored, but as new rights to overrule all other considerations.
Copyright suspends your liberty to ‘reuse’ published source code. You can purchase the source code to Windows, but copyright still suspends your liberty to modify/adapt/reproduce/distribute it. There are also laws in some jurisdictions that prevent reverse engineering of computers and/or software. It is this suspension of liberty that is the crime, that those in pursuit of freedom should be demanding the restoration of – not the breaking of ALL constraints, natural as well as unnatural.
The natural law remains: if you want something that someone has, then buy it. Invoking liberty is not a magic ‘Get what you want for free’ card, nor a valid appeal to the founding fathers, viz “Daddy, it’s my turn. Tell him he’s got to give it to me now!”.
Liberty means being able to do what the heck you want with what you have purchased – the jointly voluntary exchange of your money (or property) for someone else’s property. Liberty does not constitute a right of access.
If you want the source code that Google has then buy it. If the price you’re willing to offer isn’t high enough, well, join up with others and you may be able to offer a sufficiently high price. Just because Google is exploiting their private modifications to software someone else published, doesn’t mean they should be forced to publish them. It also makes no difference whether they publish the fruits of their exploitation, or enable the public to interact with their unpublished software.
All published works were once private, and all private works are built upon published works. This is natural. The public doesn’t have a right of access to private work, and private entities do not have a right to control use of published works (only unnatural privileges).
That copyright grants the holder unethical privileges over what people may do in public or private, does not sanctify copyleft licenses should they do anything except nullify these unethical privileges or penalise those who attempt to re-exert them otherwise.
Unfortunately, the fact that free software isn’t worth buying unless source code is available is dangerously transmuting from a ‘caveat emptor’ into a ‘droit morale’ that prohibits the sale or public use of software unless source code is provided. This may seem a subtle or trivial distinction, but it has as far reaching (and I’d say just as unethical) consequences as copyright.
Abolish copyright and do not create any law governing speech, art, software or any cultural work, that violates the private domain or suspends the liberty of those who refuse to allow their private domain to be violated. The right to privacy and publication is not trumped by the public’s curiosity and desire to study or modify. If the public want private property, they can pay for it to be published. Let not their liberty be suspended in lieu, nor their privacy be violated in pursuit.
1 Yes, I know, some folk will be thinking “Yup. Sounds about right and proper to me!”. This is simply the authorial imperative and proprietary mentality reflected from the corporation to the community. So I say “Live and let live!” The private entity may not dictate terms to the public in use of their published works, and the public may not dictate terms to the private entity in use of their unpublished works. And by ‘use’ I mean ‘use in public or private’.