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By claiming copyright or choosing a license I do not mean to obfuscate Fair Use.

In response to "Intellectual Property: Ideology vs Practicality" on ReactOS: http://www.reactos.org/node/724

So I'm a nut for intellectual property discussions. I feel like I either missed some reference to another discussion (re: consequences). It reads vague, but I think I can keep my reactions abstract enough.

I can almost do a line-by-line commentary.

"[GPL was created to ensure] users of software should have the right to modify and extend the software as they see fit" or more accurately, though less precisely, "[GPL was created to ensure] users of software are granted freedoms."

"To achieve this goal [the GPL enacts copyleft]." Copyleft software implies free software, but not equates. E.g. MIT is free but without the copyleft of the GPL.

But then there is "but there are also consequences…" and a few notes about how "GPL can actually discourage the reuse of code licensed under it" which make less sense. Since the softwares in topic are not discussed in this blog post, my response is to say that when using GPL'd code with another license, one should not use it directly. It's easy to extensibly add API functionality or to take arguments or receive messages so that one program can call on another (oh the joys of writing one's first shell). It does start to get legally awkward if one wants to combine modules of different licenses, but that can happen without the GPL.

"Again, this is a burden…" No silver bullet, eh? =)

"As such, it can become cheaper in the long run to roll one's own solution than to reuse existing GPL covered code." This could be true, but without any real examples behind it this is impossible to say. It is possible that it could be true, normatively, but generally speaking it is false; thought experiment: I take the Dark Mod and replace all of the CC-NC content with commercially licensed content (for example, but not limited to the GPL) that is orginal works from my own artists. Now I have a commerical product that I can sell. My cost benefit analysis is arm-chaired due to the fact that the artistic portions of the game were essential to the development either with shared GPL code or inventing myself.

"[Apache or BSD are more permissive, and] there is no requirement that every other piece of the software come under the same license." This statement might confuse some readers. Even the newer versions of Apache and BSD are compatible with GPL. The point here is that GPL requires that the license remains intact.

"For developers that do not care about ideology…" Why would a developer use a free or open source license if they do not care? This is not retorical. For example, why not just put the project into the public domain or just not release the source code and keep it proprietary? Either of these options are free of the "[burden] bound by the GPL [that developers/distributors are] obliged to produce that code upon request."

A note only on delivery: "Metaphorically…" There is actually some irony here because the open vs closed portion is borderline simili the way it is written while the free software is actually a metaphor. So the orders are instance[ideology, device]: openvsclose(ordinal, continuum), free(continuum, ordinal). As for the argument, I am not sure if I agree with this or not. I am interested to know more.

"With free software, the situation can become sticky very quickly." This is either a giveaway that the author equates free software with copyleft or just another indicator that I am not informed enough about the specific subject matter. Seems like the latter, given the context of the blog.

What it seems like the point of the discussion hinges on is the idea that a piece of software can move freely from a free but non-copyleft software license to either a copyleft license or a proprietary binary release. The free but non-copyleft, is the middle of the bell curve.