Re: gEDA-user: licensing Ronja under GNU FDL

["Samuel A. Falvo II" <sam.falvo@falvotech.com>]

On Tuesday 09 November 2004 12:15 am, Lars Segerlund wrote:
> > Is anyone holding an opinion here that the whole copyright matter is
> > just a piece of shit and information just wants to be free?

Read the materials on the Creative Commons website.  You'll find that our 
existing copyright laws are so baroque that CC exists to faciliate open 
distribution of materials other than software.  Public domain is NOT 
sufficient.

While I personally agree with your opinions 100%, historical precedent 
suggests that public domain and other forms of non-protected, open 
distribution has either proven unable to hold up in court or is found to 
be increasingly *difficult* to hold up in court.

Note that I define a "protected, open license" as a license such that at 
least one term of the license *mandates* the openness of the information 
licensed.  Such as, GPL, LGPL, BSD, and a wide variety of CC licenses.

Copyright is a legal tool used by authors to protect their works.  But it 
works both ways: you can use it to ensure information stays free just as 
easily as you can use it to ensure information stays closed.

The choice is yours.

--
Samuel A. Falvo II