On March 23, 2013 at 3:26 AM Martin Owens <doctormo@...400...> wrote:
See Chapter 2 of the Fairy Use Tail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo
Copyright applies to a fixed creative work, not ideas or concepts. The GPL is a subset of the copyright law, thus is can never apply to ideas.
"Roger! Copy that!" :-)
The Lifetime+70 years came up frequently at POSSCON 2012 (I mentioned earlier that I attended), but they didn't go into the "Fair Use" (and the "defensible position") too deeply. Seems like the "defensible position" is in keeping with the notion I expressed earlier — that there's some gray area that could require legal argumentation. The youtube clip itself just MIGHT be seen as an attempt to persuade (isn't it, really?).
Probably "derivation" (of the copyright law) would be a more accurate description for the GPL. It's not really a subset of the words used in the copyright law, but rather a derived interpretation thereof.
(a /SEMANTIC/ SUBSET, perhaps, but semantics is precisely what we debate over, day-to-day.)
So, all-in-all, applying our discussions practically, to this situation: Are we concluding that if some software developers who are currently actively developing some commercial product (let's call it, fictitiously, "Gadobey Doolistrator"), lurk around ... I mean, regularly read ... Inkscape mailing lists, and grab an idea for a feature which was first expressed on these mailing lists, and integrate it in their "Doolistrator" BEFORE it's integrated into inkscape -- THEY COULD NOT prevent inkscape developers from implementing the same, subsequently?
Or would the Doolistrator people then have the copyright on the feature, because they beat Inkscape developers to the actual IMPLEMENTATION? (time-wise)
And this is right. We don't want ideas to have monopolies, ever. Patents actually apply to an innovative process or invention which is not an idea, no matter how daft the software patents being granted are. Fixing patent law is basically about fixing the freedom of ideas (and maths).
OK. This is the SECOND time I attempt to respond to a reply that heralds the "anti-monopoly", "anti-prohibition" notion, as if in contradiction to something I said. That is precisely the function of GPL (one of them), and that is precisely the reason I started all this -- to make sure my idea DOES get protected by GPL, which means, protected from being monopolized!!
Martin,
On Fri, 2013-03-22 at 19:13 -0400, Bric wrote:
Hmm... I suppose, yes. But to apply the GPL one doesn't need a patent. Where does GPL fall, between copyright and patents? This is why I had the hunch that there's a lot of gray, and room for arbitrary legal decisions, persuasions.
anyhow... someone, hurry! sketch out my "superdropper" in C++, with the already named inkscape objects! :-)) (or would it be in a Python extension?) :-))
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