Re: [Fsfe-uk] Re: ECF/ESF

[Chris Croughton]

On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 11:27:52AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:

> It irritates me when supposedly freedom-minded people use the failed
> US trademark term "Open Source" instead of "free software", "free
> media" or similar terms. Are they scared to speak about freedom?

To most of the people I talk to about computers, excepting the
already-converted GNU/Linux/etc. geeks, "free software" and "free media"
mean free as in "free beer" and nothing else.  And they care about
nothing else.  They already have those freedoms they want and need (as
far as they are concerned they have the freedom to copy and use the
programs and music as they like, as long as they don't get caught), and
aren't capable or interested in the others, like reading and modifying
source.  Since "free media" apparently isn't about getting costless
copies of new TV shows and pop records, they aren't interested.

On the other hand, "open source" and "open media standards" are
something they can understand.  They may not want or need the former,
but it sounds like a Godd Thing(tm).  "Open media standards" they /can/
understand, because they get fed up with having to buy (or copy
illegally) even more software (and sometimes hardware) just for
proprietary formats.

> It would also be really good if people could ask the Creative Commons
> people to address the "comparable credit" and "anti-DRM" lawyerbombs
> and the "author name purge" and "supertrademark" bugs present in all
> their by-* licences. These issues have been dismissed by some CC
> people and ignored by most, but no material under a CC 2.0 licence can
> be free software. If you want more details, see Evan Prodromou's draft
> summary at http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary.html (which has a
> few bugs, but should give you the ideas) or ask me off-list.

Well, it may not be 'free' according to the Debian definition, but isn't
the same true of some of the FSF documentation licences?  At least some
of what is on that web page seems to me (a non-lawyer) as silly
nitpicking, in particular claiming that the anti-DRM clause means that
it can't be distributed at all privately (if read that literally it
would mean that playing a CC-licence CD through headphones would be not
allowed, because it is "restricting access").

It's that sort of nitpicking which puts a lot of people off the "free
software" community.  "You say it gives me freedom, but then you won't
let me use it with other free software", for instance (was it KDE which
couldn't be included in Debian because two 'free' licences conflicted?).
Or you get the software but not the documentation because that is
distributed under a licence the FSF considers 'free' but debian-legal
doesn't.

Chris C