[cc-community] Resources on the history of the copyleft movement...
Terry Hancock
hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Thu Mar 15 11:21:44 EST 2007
Christopher Rios wrote:
> I'm currently working on a copyleft presentation for a graduate class
> I am taking and a group of librarians. I am an advocate of Creative
> Commons and will be incorporating a message of endorsement. I'm
> trying to find a history of the copyleft movement and was hoping that
> somebody might be able to point me towards a resource that is
> accurate and authoritative (whatever that may mean).
I find Eric Raymond's version enlightening:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/hacker-history/
It's weak on some of the ideological motivations, but it is particularly
strong in providing a context for the events described in Stallman's own
autobiographical works (which have been dubbed "auto-hagiographical" ;-)
). It's particularly good at explaining the kinds of values of the
culture which produced Stallman himself and the movement he started, as
well as the larger culture in which that movement operates.
ESR's opinions are often considered controversial, as are Stallman's. I
think they provide much-needed counterpoints to each other's PoV, so it
is far better to read both than either one alone. Raymond might be
called a "right-libertarian" and Stallman a "left-libertarian", in
political terms. Also, Raymond's argumentation is "scientific" (it
attempts to describe the phenomenon in terms of objective behavior)
while Stallman's is "religious" (it attempts to place value-judgements
on actions in order to promote particular behavior as 'righteous').
I find that I often prefer Stallman's conclusions, but Raymond's
reasons. ;-)
Cheers,
Terry
(Oh, I'm not looking up the Stallman refs, because others have done so.
You'll also find plenty of material under http://www.gnu.org/philosophy
. This is especially good for primary source material.).
--
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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