Verily I say unto thee, that thufir spake thusly:
> On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:01:43 +0100, Homer wrote:
>> I thought it was pretty clear that Ballmer was actually referring
>> to the GPL, which promotes Freedom (his nemesis which he derides as
>> "cancer"), in contrast to the slavery of Intellectual Monopoly,
>> which is pretty much all that keeps Microsoft in business.
>
> Far from being ant-IP, the GPL utilizes existing IP laws
The GPL is *copyleft*, which is by design and intent anti-"IP":
[quote]
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright and describes the practice of
using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and
modified versions of a work for others and requiring that the same
freedoms be preserved in modified versions.
[/quote]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft
This fiction called "IP" takes away rights using the restriction of
exclusivity. The purpose of the GPL is to /remove/ those restrictions,
providing works that are /inclusive/ rather than /exclusive/.
It doesn't get any more anti-IP than that.
> I would hate for Microsoft to be able to just swap out Windows for
> Linux and not be bound by the GPL!
So are you claiming that a license is only enforceable if it mandates
exclusivity?
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining
| armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos
| neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate
| technology, led them into it in the first place." ~ Douglas Adams
`----
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.23.8-63.fc8
14:24:18 up 212 days, 10:59, 3 users, load average: 0.38, 0.28, 0.27
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