[cc-community] Open Hardware Licence
Alan Cox
alan at lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk
Fri May 8 12:24:42 EDT 2009
>> Seriously? You're lecturing me about "freedom" and
> how my "opinion" needs to subjugate to FSF's
> "long time to formulate its viewpoints",
> and you don't even understand the problem????
I'm not arguing that you have to agree with the FSF (merely pointing you
seemed to have no clue where they came from), and yes I do understand the
problem, and I do know how chip design works.
> Because the silicon is not a copyright derivative.
I was hoping that by asking how you saw it I'd get an explanation of your
viewpoint which would feed into a useful debate. Apparently that aspect
of civilised behaviour is rewarded in your case by ranting .. oh well.
The protection of chips is different from almost all other physical
objects because of the SCPA and 1987/54/EEC. Thats uninteresting to the
general problem of open replicated physical objects, but seems rather
relevant to your specific corner case of chips yes ?
I've also heard differing views from the legal profession about GPL
source to physical objects as object code, and I'm not sure they know the
answer either.
> So you can stop wasting my time about pointless
> vocabulary or why I should worship at the alter
> of FSF
Oh yes I know who you are without the URLS, that's why I'm not suprised
to find you assuming that anyone suggesting the FSF are anything but some
evil plot is clearly an FSF spokesman and part of the Great Conspiracy.
No suprise either that your previous emails were full of misleading
claims.
You may have been "in the fight since the beginning", but some of us would
prefer not to be propoganda bombed, shot at or otherwise subject to
collateral damage caused by either side in your little war with the FSF.
I hope your knowledge of copyright law is a bit more reliable than your
knowledge of FSF funding.
In the meantime I'd like to see some real progress on dealing with the
problems of general purpose licenses laws and ethics around copying,
replication and physical objects - chips included. At some point in
the future mass replication is going to become a political issue,
politicians are going to go into "flap wildly must be seen to do
something" mode, and it is critical that someone other than big industry
has something to feed them or we'll get another DMCA style legal
catastrophe.
It's an area CC as a whole seems to be ignoring - and I think it does so
at its peril. Works without physical form are a special case that happens
to have gone open first simply because we invented the replicator for
such works first.
Alan
More information about the cc-community
mailing list