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From: Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com>
Subject: Re: GPL and "free" software
Date: 1999/04/29
Message-ID: <7g9jm0$9pn$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1
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In article <3727B3E3.28755434@noah.dhs.org>,
  "Joshua E. Rodd" <jerodd@noah.dhs.org> wrote:
> The MIT/X11 licence gives the ultimate freedom: the
> freedom to do as you ought, and even as you not
> ought--you are granted the
> freedom to take other's freedom away.

Of course putting something in the public domain has the
same effect. Actually people are always a bit surprised
that when you put something in the PD, it is perfectly
OK for someone to take it, make a minor change, copyright
the result, and sell it as a proprietary program.

They expect that something in the public domain should
belong to the public, i.e. that the public should have
a sort of virtual copyright on PD stuff. But that's not
the way things work, if something is in the PD there is
no copyright.

Indeed one way to characterize the intent of the GPL is to
achieve what many people *think* PD is about. With the GPL,
in a sense, the public does have a copyright interest,
since no one can make deriviative works that they alone
own, and the public is guaranteed full access to the
original work, and to any deriviative works that are
distributed.

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