Re: [LAD] students and copyright

On Monday 03 August 2009 01:28:14 Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> jaromil wrote:
>
> "Welcome to Impro-Visor (Improvisation Advisor) Version 4, from Bob
> Keller at Harvey Mudd College.
>
> [snip]
>
> Bob Keller, Impro-Visor Project Director" (README.txt)
>
> I don't like it, but it's not important if I or anybody else does or
> doesn't like it. The students are mature and if they are fine with it,
> it's their choice. And the good thing, there's no confusing list of
> students participating ;).

Sure. Responsible choices.

>
> Jazz musicians don't learn to improvise by a bot, but by this discussion
> I learned a lot about the GPL. It would be fine if there would be an
> easy to understand Wiki about the GPL, then nobody needs to controvert
> the GPL on any developer mailing list.

I find it frustrating to have to explain the GPL to people over and over.
I have had to do it numerous times in the past and probably will in the
future. I'm almost inclined to put up a web page with my explanations
so I do not have to repeat everything again and again. Of course, there
will still be those who do not read it properly and then disagree, at which
point the same things will have to be explained again. This is what you
have to deal with when it comes to a legal document. The language of
theses types of documents is not everyday, so it confuses people. And
the GPL is very light on legalese at that.

> The German Wiki seems to be such an easy to understand clarification,
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License, but anyway, it
> differs to a lot of expert posts by this discussion.
>
> "Ziel ist es, die Freiheit eines Programmes auch in der
> Weiterentwicklung von anderen sicherzustellen." on English this sentence
> means that it's particularly wanted that someone like Raymond is allowed
> to fork a modified project that original is from somebody else.
>
> "The original Impro-Visor project is now hosted on sourceForge. This is
> using little changes as a red herring to try to take control of that
> project, apparently." (posted by keller91711 4 days ago)
>
> There's no red herring needed to use the libre that is guaranteed by the
> GPL.

Just another offensive commentary that flies in the face of the rights
guaranteed by the GPL. Anybody, according to that mentality, is evil
if they dare fork free software. A whole world community disagrees
with that attitude.

>
> If I do understand the German Wiki right, Bob Keller still is violating
> the GPL. This isn't an attack by me, it's confusing me, on English there
> e.g. is: "you need to include any such compile-time configuration files,
> too" (http://gpl-violations.org/faq/sourcecode-faq.html)

Exactly. Just as I have indicated.

> Anyway, it's hard to understand what needs to be done and what not. As
> somebody who doesn't understand a lot of issues I was asked not to
> comment anything, by people who might have knowledge about the GPL, but
> on the other hand some easy to understand clarifications disagree with
> this knowledge.
>
> This is confusing and explains that it's hard to comply to the GPL and
> in addition to individual laws of some countries and different points of
> view by experts.
>
> Is http://gpl-violations.org right or wrong with it's interpretation of
> the GPL?

They are correct. And I am echoing almost exactly what they say.

Raymond

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Received on Mon Aug 3 16:15:01 2009