[FM Discuss] updated IBD

[Daniel James]

Hi Camille,
> rms has spilled much ink and sweatied up his brow to make it clear
> that he is a Free Software advocate but not a supporter of Free Culture

I'm not speaking on his behalf :-)

> We can't
> conflate GPL software with all of Free Software and we can't conflate
> Free Culture with Free Software. Lots of oranges and apples and pears

True, although Free Culture licensing clearly descends from Free
Software licensing.

> I understand the importance of keeping Free software Free, but I don't
> hold as one of the motivations for that to be the fear of being "ripped
> off". 

That's the difference between copyleft and more permissive licenses
(e.g. BSD-style). If there were no concerns about exploitation, the GPL
would not have been necessary. RMS's concern may have been expressed in
terms of continued access to source code, rather than sustainable models
for independent creators, since he was working at MIT at the time.

> I think what you're calling "ripping off" is what most
> people call "monetizing"

Some might call it that; I might call it unethical or counter-productive
monetizing. In RMS terms, it was the monetizing of code that restricted
his access to improved source code.

I believe that if there's money to be made, the authors should be the
first to get the benefit of that. Otherwise we create a perverse
incentive to freeload on the work of others, rather than a positive
incentive to contribute.

One of my least favourite metaphors in corporate press releases is
'harness the power of the open source community', since it reminds me of
a feudal yoke:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoulder_pole

> and the GPL never states that you can't make
> money off of Free software.

Indeed, many cloud software companies are taking advantage of that,
without contributing back their code improvements. That's why the AGPL
was introduced:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License

> Also, making free software non-free is a violation of a license and
> people who do that can be penalized.

That's a civil matter, so in practice you have to be able to afford a
team of lawyers.

Also you have to be able to catch the person doing the infringing, which
is non-trivial for cultural works since we have a huge darknet populated
with freeloaders. Look at http://sourceforge.net/top/ and you will see
hundreds of millions of downloads of P2P clients.

> That is what Free Software
> Conservancy and other organizations like it do.

In theory, but see my answer above.

> I still don't understand exactly what you are concerned about and/or
> proposing here....

In a nutshell, I don't think we can afford to be complacent about
unethical monetizing. I expect the FM/Booktype model to be disruptive to
the publishing industry. If that happens, we will need an economic and
social model which will enable us to keep on writing, free from yokes.

Cheers!

Daniel