[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

Tue Jun 1 00:40:21 UTC 2004

--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> I am at least in part misunderstanding you.
> If what you mean by the «gratis» bit is that the ''licence''
> (which provides the «libre» bit) is provided free of charge,
> then you are certainly correct that this is essential to free software.
> 
> That said, I still don't think that it's really accurate
> to say that «libre» + «gratis» is the foundation of the movement.
> The foundation is purely «libre»; «gratis» is only a means to that end.

That is a valid viewpoint. In a far more fair world we wouldn't have copyrights
and patents at all. People would just freely work together to advance knowledge
and we would not have to deal with copyright and patent rubbish. But in the
world we live in we have to use the existing rules to get what we want. So we
write licenses to ensure content/software has some measure of freedom by giving
away certain rights we have over that content/software. 

> >The English language word 'free' isn't the best one for this.
> >I will use gratis and libre from now on.
> 
> So are you explicitly including «copyleft»
> as part of the meaning of your term "libre"?

If the content itself is liberated from control, then it is libre. I'm sure
some people say many different things and try to draw a distinction between
libre and copyleft. For me the only practical way for content to be truly libre
is for it to be copyleft - otherwise (to use an analogy) its descendants
(derivative works) can be enslaved (put under proprietary control). 

We can agree to disagree over the nuances. 

Pax.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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