88 lines
5.3 KiB
Org Mode
88 lines
5.3 KiB
Org Mode
#+title: My works, non-copylefted
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#&summary
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Why I don't use copyleft for my own works.
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#&
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#+startup: showall
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#+license: wtfpl
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* My works, non-copylefted
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A few months ago, I went from using the GPL for most of my software to BSD3;
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read about it [[/writings/software-licenses][here]]. I chose to continue to use Creative Commons
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Attribution-ShareAlike for most of my non-software works.
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Now, I have chosen to stop copylefting my original works entirely.
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I do this not because of a change in my general view of copyleft, but because I
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don't see myself ever using the legal benefits of copyleft; I can still
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understand why someone would choose to use copyleft to challenge copyright,
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fighting fire with fire, but it's just not something I would do.
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The power of copyright lies in whether people accept the terms that an author
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puts forth, and that, if the copyright is abused, the author uses the law to
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punish the abusers. The same is essentially true for copyleft. So, if I
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release a work under e.g. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, and someone
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derives a new work from that and does not copyleft that, I have the power to
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make them change that decision; I could contact them and try to convince them to
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be nice and free their work; I could contact them and say they *must* free the
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work because of the law; and I could even /sue/ them for not freeing their work!
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Until now I have, without really realizing it, used copyleft licenses only for
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the signal they send: If you create something new from something I have made
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free, please make your work free as well. I never thought about what would
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happen and what I would do if someone broke the law and didn't follow my
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copyleft. I probably should have thought about that at the beginning, but hey,
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I just wanted to make my works freely available and modifiable and hope that
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others would do the same!
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While I don't think it is wrong to use even lawsuits for upholding copyleft,
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it's not something I would /ever/ do. If someone takes a copylefted work and
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abuses it, the community does not lose works; it simply does not gain them.
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Arguing against this argument would be the same as asserting that Hollywood
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loses money when people do not pay for digital, made-at-no-cost copies of their
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films -- a view I certainly don't agree with.
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Of course, I might never have to enter a lawsuit to uphold copyleft. Maybe just
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asking the abuser would be enough in all cases. But since this very page is
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public, the abuser would realize that I don't intend to sue in any case, so they
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might just ignore my request. And I don't intend to manipulate people into
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making them think I would sue them.
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It's not my impression that there has been a lot of court cases involving
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copyleft; most of the license violations seem to be handled without the need for
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lawsuits, though I guess both lawyers and the threat of lawsuits are still quite
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used. The FSF's [[https://www.fsf.org/licensing/compliance][Compliance Lab]] gives a good impression of the potential
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difficulty of fixing license violations. I don't mind this compliance fixing,
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but in principle I am a bit against spending time making evil people relicense
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works when time could be spent making good people create new, free works. In
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the long run, this will surely result in more good, free works, though forcing
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someone evil to relicence might be practical in the short run.
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In essence: Copyright is so hopelessly broken, and personally I'm not going to
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fight copyright with itself. This is because I'm not going to depend its and
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copyleft's legal benefits, and that is because I would only depend on something
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broken if I found it /very/ necessary and not just useful in the short run. I
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just want to share my works freely, and if someone who uses my works don't want
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to do that, I'll simply ignore them. My walking away from copyleft makes my
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works usable by more people.
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#&img;url=/img/licenses/wtfpl.png,float=right
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So, from now on I'll use the [[http://www.wtfpl.net/][Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License (WTFPL)]]
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for all my original works, software and culture alike. I don't think that the
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"fuck" in the license is a problem. I also thought about using Creative Commons
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Zero, but even though [[http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0_FAQ][it can be used for software]], [[http://opensource.org/licenses/index.html][OSI has not approved it]]
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because of [[http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-February/thread.html][a patent clause]] ([[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0][FSF has approved it]], and it's also DFSG-free), so it
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might be unpractical. WTFPL has been approved by the FSF. [[http://opensource.org/minutes20090304][OSI rejected it]], but
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that's because they didn't consider it a license and not because they disagreed
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with any of the (1) clauses in the WTFPL, so I don't think using the WTFPL will
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pose any practical problems. I'll still contribute to copyleft works, though I
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might mention this URL.
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I was a bit inspired by [[http://blog.ninapaley.com/2013/01/18/ahimsa-sita-sings-the-blues-now-cc-0-public-domain/][Nina Paley's change to CC 0 from CC BY-SA]]. I think her
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story is scary.
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My first copylefted program to be un-copylefted is the generator for this
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website which used to be under the AGPL. I'll relicense the rest of my works on
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a need-to-basis (there are so many, and I have other stuff to do).
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