[comp.emacs] Swedish copyright laws

KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU ("Keith F. Lynch") (12/14/86)

Please reply to me, I am not on Unix-Emacs.

    From: Christer Johansson <mcvax!enea!kuling!christer@seismo.css.gov>

    ... The swedish copyright law only applies to programs if they're works
    of art.  (In a lawsuit recently visicalc was found not to be a work of
    art.  The same would probably hold for emacs.) ...

  Great.  No doubt people are wondering why so many popular American
programs are no longer for sale in Sweden, and why very little good
software is written there any more.
  Why not give the individual a choice?  If he doesn't find a given
program worth the hassle of not being allowed to copy it, he doesn't
have to buy it.  But why should other people, who may find the utility
of the program worth its cost and restrictions, be forced to go along
with his choice?
  Why shouldn't the author of software have a choice?  He can put any
restrictions he likes on the use of his program, and if people don't
like it, they can choose not to buy it.  Instead, he is told if he
writes a program, and the Swedish government doesn't consider it a
work of art (as if government's proper role was that of art critic)
that anyone may steal a copy for himself.
								...Keith

rms@PREP.AI.MIT.EDU ("Richard M. Stallman") (12/16/86)

Why should the author of a program be allowed control over the
future actions of other people?

Why should all of us tolerate a practice where some people (software
"owners") pressure members of the public (software buyers) to promise
to refuse to cooperate with other members of the public?  This
practice, where a wealthy few turn people against their neighbors so
that in the end we sign away our rights, erodes the public spirit that
is vital for us all.

Our weath today comes from cooperation.  The more we can cooperate,
the more wealthy we can all be.  Occasionally a few will see ways to
profit from being uncooperative.  Society can sustain the direct
effect of a certain amount of this.  But it has a long term effect
that is even worse.  When a few become rich by dividing the others,
everyone else tries to imitate them.  Eventually, everyone is looking
for ways to obstruct other people and thus blackmail them.  Nobody
cooperates, nothing works as it is supposed to, and we all become poorer.
This is social decay.  This is how the US is going.  Look at Boesky.
Look at all the office buildings and hotels being built in Boston,
and then look at the homeless people.

Even if we decide, in the name of personally liberty, to tolerate such
activity on a small scale by individuals, we can still discourage it
on large scales through industrial regulations, and keep our personal
freedom intact.  We can still raise the public consciousness as to
the wrongness of hoarding information and thus inspire a general
refusal of consumers to accept it.

Right now, however, the government does exactly the opposite: it
encourages hoarding by laws that give authors undeserved power over
the public.  This is suicide for society.  But it has one happy
consequence: we have no conflict between personal liberty and
discouraging hoarding, because by eliminating government intervention
on the hoarders' side we can discourage hoarding and expand personal
liberty at the same time.

If we think that some software author deserves X dollars, we are
much better off simply handing him X dollars from the treasury
and making the software free, than arranging for him to get X
dollars through a mechanism that promotes social decay and creates
a financial disincentive discouraging use of the program.

pooh@unirot.UUCP (One damn minute, Admiral) (12/16/86)

Funny, I could have sworn this was comp.emacs and not talk.politics. . .

(Paul, I'm going to beat you to the punch here and suggest that
this is not the place to discuss anything other than technical
topics. . . No, don't thank me.)

I still haven't heard whether anyone has heard of an IBM xedit
mode for Emacs. . .

Pooh                 rutgers!unipress!pooh
                     rutgers!unirot!pooh
                     pooh@aim.rutgers.edu

Our manuals are sold by weight, not volume.  Some
settling of contents may have occurred during
shipping and handling.

dlr@ihdev.UUCP (12/17/86)

The following is a gist of some of R M Stallman's article on "software
ownership.  The article is a collectivist diatribe against the very
foundations of western democracies.  Read on...
.
.ai.mit.edu> rms@PREP.AI.MIT.EDU ("Richard M. Stallman") writes:
>...
>
>Why should all of us tolerate a practice where some people (software
>"owners") pressure members of the public (software buyers) to promise
>to refuse to cooperate with other members of the public? ...
>...
>								Nobody
>cooperates, nothing works as it is supposed to, and we all become poorer.
>This is social decay.  This is how the US is going.
>...
>Even if we decide, in the name of personally liberty, to tolerate such
>activity on a small scale by individuals, we can still discourage it
>on large scales through industrial regulations, and keep our personal
>freedom intact.  We can still raise the public consciousness as to
>the wrongness of hoarding information and thus inspire a general
>refusal of consumers to accept it.
>
>...

(	The remainder of the article was deleted to surve the purge
	imposed by our newsposter that requires more new text than
	quoted text.  )

I am appalled that the the author of this article would use his standing
as (a/the) developer of one of the best known editors on this network to
mount a political soap-box to post such a vituperative diatribe. 

Competition and pay for services is the foundation of democratic
capitolist civilization.  The call for "industrial regulation" goes
completely again the desire for freedom of expression and creation that
he urges we accept.  The so-called "hoarding of information" and
"wrongness" of someone selling software for a profit are what has
produced much of the software used to operate and use the network we are
now reading article from.

If we deny the ability of people to create and sell software for a
living, where are the talents of all of us reading the news here going
go?  I submit that we will all find ourselves seeking another trade and
starving on the streetcorner.  If someone does not work for "profit" and
make enough at it to pay taxes on those profits, where are the
governmental tax dollars going to come from to pay for the chosen few to
write software.

The idea that a government should decide what a product is worth, what
it should cost, who shall be rewarded for it being produced, etc. are
all hallmarks of communism.  We all have read about how well the Soviet
government manages its economy.

Each of you who is old enough to be in college (or beyond) remembers (or
should) the fiasco that was the Nixon era's Wage and Price Controls. 
Look at how well government regulation has strengthened our farms and
agricultural states economies.  Remember that the oil price fluctuations
have been directly and indirectly caused by governmental (ours and
others) manipulation of world markets.

Do you want ALL software development managed by that group of "proven
performers"? 

I do not argue with the place of public domain software.

I do not want to interfere in Mr. Stallman's right to place his work in
the public domain and refuse to let it be sold.

I do not want to interfere in the altruism or other motives of people
who produce excellent (or otherwise) products for the use by the public
and encourage the copying or free distribution of those products.

When, and if, I produce some program that has general usefulness on my
free time, I will probably donate it to the net, after all I have gotten
quite a few very nice and helpful products off of this network.

But, and a very large but, I will resist with all my influence the idea
that we should each be producing all our software free and for public use
and expecting the government to pay us for our daily bread.  That way
lies stifling government regulation and total loss of individual liberty
and creativeness.  Do you trust some government bureaucrat to recognize
your worth as a programmer, writer, or any other profession?


D. L. Ritchey (Don)             AT&T Bell Labs
IH 6h-313                       Naperville, IL
(312) 979-6179
-- 
D. L. Ritchey (Don)             AT&T Bell Labs
IH 6h-313                       Naperville, IL
(312) 979-6179

rgenter@Diamond.BBN.COM (Rick Genter) (12/17/86)

In article <1082@ihdev.UUCP>, dlr@ihdev.UUCP (D. L. Ritchey) writes:

* The following is a gist of some of R M Stallman's article on "software
* ownership.  The article is a collectivist diatribe against the very
* foundations of western democracies.  Read on...
* 
* [ quotes from rms' comments on on social decay in the US, etc. ]
*
* I am appalled that the the author of this article would use his standing
* as (a/the) developer of one of the best known editors on this network to
* mount a political soap-box to post such a vituperative diatribe. 

Obviously this person has never read the GNU Manifesto (back of the GNU Emacs
Manual).
					- Rick
--------
Rick Genter 				BBN Laboratories Inc.
(617) 497-3848				10 Moulton St.  6/512
rgenter@bbn.COM  (Internet new)		Cambridge, MA   02238
rgenter@bbnj.ARPA (Internet old)	seismo!bbn.com!rgenter (UUCP)

tower@PREP.AI.MIT.EDU (Leonard H. Tower Jr.) (12/17/86)

This is a follow-up to the recent discussion of software ownership in
comp.emacs. 

* Preliminaries

** Disclaimer

This response is my own personal opinion, and does not represent the
view of Project GNU or the Free Software Foundation.

** Inappropriate for comp.emacs?

Many readers of the technical USENET group comp.emacs dislike having
non-technical discussion in this group.  People who wish to discuss
these issues at length, should probably move the discussion to another
newsgroup (e.g. talk.politics).

** Waste of my time?

I may rue this posting.  I have serious doubt that I will cause
anyone's opinion to change, or even encourage the competitors to
carefully examine the cooperators side.  Most of the cooperators have
most carefully examined the competitors side (its almost impossible
to be educated in the US and not get a full dose of the competitors'
reasoning).

* Rationale

My stomach has clenched up once too often at the flaming that comes up
about GNU on comp.emacs.  It's (in the MIT idiom) losing.  It's based
on misconceptions, misunderstanding, and knee-jerk reactions.

My goal is to encourage more reasonable examination of the issues.

* Bias, backgrounds, and mis-understanding

Many of the people who are flaming or more rationally disagreeing with
rms haven't read many of his earlier postings about his beliefs.  They
are making many false assumptions about his beliefs.  I suspect none
of them have read the GNU Manifesto.  (It's in the GNU Emacs
distribution as EMACSDIR/etc/GNU ["C-h C-n C-x C-v G N U RET" will
read it into a buffer].  I be willing to mail copies of the GNU
Manifesto to those who don't have access to GNU Emacs.)  It's not a
perfect answer to the problems involved in liberating software, but
its a very large significant step down the road.

I advise people to read rms's words carefully, and not let their
backgrounds mis-interpret the words or insert thoughts that aren't
there.

* More background reading

The following books are recommended reading for all competitors who
wish to know their enemy, the cooperators, better.  They are also good
reading for competitors who want to give the other side a fair
hearing.

** No Contest, The Case Against Competition

Sub-titled: Why we lose in our race to win.
by Alfie Kohn, 1986, published by Houghton Mifflin, Co., Boston, MA.
ISBN 0-395-39387-6

This book shows why competition is wrong.  It is extensively footnoted
and has a comprehensive bibliography.  Mr. Kohn notes many of the
academic studies done on competition and cooperation.  He also
effectively refutes all the usual arguments and justifications used to
support competition.  His definition of competition is: Mutually
Exclusive Goal Attainment, which is a bit narrower than the common
usage.

** Honest Business

Sub-titled: A Superior Strategy for Starting and Managing Your Own Business.
by Michael Phillips and Salli Rasberry, 1981, published by Clear Glass
Publishing Company, San Francisco, and Random House, New York.
ISBN 0-394-51779-2, ISBN 0-394-74830-1 (paperback)

This book shows how to openly and cooperatively run a successful
business without Mutually Exclusive Goal Attainment.  It also defines
the kind of personality that is needed to successfully run a business,
and has may helpful tactics on succeeding in business.

** The Evolution of Cooperation

by Robert Axelrod, 1984, published by Basic Books, Inc., New York.
ISBN 0-465-02122-0 ISBN 0-465-02121-2 (paperback)

A scholarly study that examines how cooperation works, and how it
succeeds even in competitive environments.  A summary of this book
(from K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation) is that to encourage
cooperative behavior one must be nice, retaliatory, AND forgiving
(all at the same time!).

* Comments on previous postings

** USSR /= cooperation

Russia is not a cooperative society (though I suspect a lot of
cooperation is used by its citizens to survive there).  It's not even
a socialist one.  There are many examples of cooperative societies, the
Kibbutz's in Israel being one.  What are termed communist countries
today are quite different than what Marx conceived them to be.  (Note
that I am not speaking for or against Marx here.)

** Even competitors use cooperative behavior

They cooperate by using a common tongue.  Obeying red lights.  Walking
and driving on the proper side of the way.  

When anyone doesn't follow these accepted cooperative behaviors, the
rest of us know they are wrong, and often we have codified this
wrongness into law, making the un-cooperative behavior a crime.  One
of the goals of GNU is to get people to wake up to the fact that
software hoarding is anti-coopeerative and wrong the same way.

* End

(whew ... ;-}  )  I could get into a detailed blow-by-blow rebuttal of
the previous postings, but I want to get back to helping GNU and the
other society building activities I'm involved in, cooperatively.

Hoping I have encouraged a more thorough examination of the
cooperative alternative by you competitors.


Len Tower

ORGANIZATION: Project GNU of the Free Software Foundation
	   1000 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA  02138, USA +1 (617) 876-3296
HOME: 36 Porter Street, Somerville, MA  02143, USA +1 (617) 623-7739
UUCP: {}!mit-eddie!mit-prep!tower	INTERNET:   tower@prep.ai.mit.edu

fouts@orville (Marty Fouts) (12/17/86)

In article <8612171607.AA09065@EDDIE.MIT.EDU> tower@prep.ai.mit.edu writes:
[I have deleted pieces of this.  Don't quote tower from my reply.  I have
 tried not to distort what he said, but go back to his original posting
 to be sure.]

>** Inappropriate for comp.emacs?
>
(To paraphrase) everything that has been said so far (including this
posting) is inappropriate.  Would the NEXT author PLEASE move the
discussion someplace else.

>
>** Waste of my time?
>
>I may rue this posting.  I have serious doubt that I will cause
>anyone's opinion to change, or even encourage the competitors to
>carefully examine the cooperators side.  Most of the cooperators have
>most carefully examined the competitors side (its almost impossible
>to be educated in the US and not get a full dose of the competitors'
>reasoning).
>

This isn't a sides issue.  As someone who has successfully used cooperation
and competition to achieve results, I would like to point out that there
is a time and place for each.  It always bothers me when someone assumes I
disagree with him because I don't understand his position.  (More below)

>* Rationale
>
>My stomach has clenched up once too often at the flaming that comes up
>about GNU on comp.emacs.  It's (in the MIT idiom) losing.  It's based
>on misconceptions, misunderstanding, and knee-jerk reactions.

This is an excelent way to continue a flaming contest.  Pour some oil on
the fire.

>
>My goal is to encourage more reasonable examination of the issues.
>

Oddly enough, in responding to RMS' diatribe, this was my goal (:-)

>* Bias, backgrounds, and mis-understanding
>
>Many of the people who are flaming or more rationally disagreeing with
>rms haven't read many of his earlier postings about his beliefs.

I haven't taken a poll, so I don't know how many.  I for one have read
the GNU Manifesto AND the GNU General Public License (in which the copyright
law is invoked to protect the author's property. . .) as well as RMS'
letter to the editor of the communications of the ACM (and Das Kapital. ;-)

>I advise people to read rms's words carefully, and not let their
>backgrounds mis-interpret the words or insert thoughts that aren't
>there.
>

I have read rms.  Carefully.  Then pondered.  I still disagree.  His point
of view appears naive.  Humans compete.  They also cooperate.  Given the choice
they compete.  Given the choice they do better in a situation where they
receive a direct reward for their effort.

>* More background reading

A case can be made that competition doesn't always work and has serious
problems.  A case can also be made that cooperative efforts are prone to
misuse and abuse.

A favorable treatment of good competition is The Discovers.  (I don't remember
the author.)  Although generally about how discoveries are made, the book is
an indirect argument in favor of competition.

Also, the discussion of the MIT AI labs in the book Hackers gives some good
examples of useful competition in conjunction with cooperation.  In
competing to see who could squeeze the most cycles out of a code, the AI
lab hackers made the code better. In cooperating to make the codes available,
they made the competition possible.

>* Comments on previous postings
>
>** USSR /= cooperation
>

I agree.  Not relevent to discussion.

>
>** Even competitors use cooperative behavior

and even cooperators use competitive behavior.  (See the above example of
the MIT AI lab)

>* End

>Hoping I have encouraged a more thorough examination of the
>cooperative alternative by you competitors.

Hoping I have encouraged a more balanced examination of the choice
between coopearation and competition by you cooperators.

Marty

The only thing I ever learned is that every issue has (at least) two sides
and the answer lies  between them.

tron@nsc.NSC.COM (tron) (12/18/86)

In article <1082@ihdev.UUCP> dlr@ihdev.UUCP (55224-D. L. Ritchey) writes:
>			...  The so-called "hoarding of information" and
>"wrongness" of someone selling software for a profit are what has
>produced much of the software used to operate and use the network we are
>now reading article from.

As I see it this network is an excelent example of what can be done on
a cooperative basis.  Unix, the operating system base for the network, was
done to a large extent on a cooperative basis between Bell Labs and
Universities.  Then, the news software, which rides on top of this operating
system, is public domain.  It was created and is maintained on a volunteer
basis using feed-back from the user community.

I do not necessarily disagree with you on all points, but I think you missed
an important lesson through this misunderstanding of the USENET network.

   tron  |-<=>-|    ARPAnet: nsc!tron@sun.COM
  tron@sc.nsc.com   UUCPnet: {amdahl,decwrl,hplabs,pyramid,sun}!nsc!tron

liberte@uiucdcsb.cs.uiuc.edu (12/19/86)

Some clarifications are in order.

GNU Emacs is not public domain.  It is free and constrained to be
free.  In fact, the Free Software Foundation is attempting to
control future actions of the users of their software, perhaps
regrettably.

Democracy and capitalism are not identical.  Democracy is a political
system, capitalism an economic system.  They tend to go together, but
dont have to.  In fact, the U.S.  espouses democracy while often
promoting dictatorships which support capitalism.  

I will post a longer note to talk.politics.theory discussing these
issues in more detail.  Below is the more relevant part on
information.


-------------------------------------

Back to the issue of the ownership and control of information.  This should
be distinguished from the sale of information.  Information is a strange
thing since it is non-material and costs hardly anything to copy.  But
the creators of information need to recover their research and development
costs and need to be rewarded in proportion to the market value of the product.

Thus, I defend the right of software companies to charge for their software,
perhaps on a sliding scale based on the number of sales.  This is essentially
what the "free market" system does by allowing companies to charge what the
market will bear.  But there has to be a competing company to drive the
price down as more sales are made.  However, with competition we also get
the cut-throat practices, the wastefulness of redundant research, and the
shoddy products that reduce us to barbarians.

In the future, as more and more of what is traded will be information,
it will become ever more important that fair trade policies be
established for this information commodity.  Information should become
cheap and it will sell more easily.  When information is used for the
development of other products, royalties should go to the creator
of the information.  Therefore, getting a program source should be relatively
inexpensive, but if that source is used in another product, accrued 
royalties may equal or exceed the alternative one-time payment, and will
pay for the source in proportion to its lasting value.

To ensure that this system works, the sale of information and other products
would have to be regulated.  Such regulation and control by the government
amounts to ownership by the government.  If the government is truly
"of the people" then the abuses of government will be minimized.
People fear government mostly because their experiences have been bad.
Education is the key to successful participatory democracy.


Daniel LaLiberte   217-333-8740
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Department of Computer Science
1304 W Springfield
Urbana, IL  61801

liberte@b.cs.uiuc.edu
liberte@uiuc.csnet
ihnp4!uiucdcs!liberte

{ moderation in all things - including moderation }

bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) (12/19/86)

>I am appalled that the the author of this article would use his standing
>as (a/the) developer of one of the best known editors on this network to
>mount a political soap-box to post such a vituperative diatribe. 
>D. L. Ritchey (Don)             AT&T Bell Labs

Oh shut up. Actually, if you wanted to say that you don't understand
what you read why didn't you just say so instead of all this posturing
and red-baiting. We're appalled that someone who isn't even an author
of one of the best known editors on this network is mounting a
soap-box to post such vituperative diatribe*.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University

* Libertarian flamers: don't quote my note w/o quoting the context it
was responding to, don't leave out this footnote either.

martillo@mit-trillian.MIT.EDU (Yakim Martillo) (12/20/86)

You can call Stallman's point of view as naive and unrealistic as you
want but he is totally upfront and clear about what he wants.  Some of
us were hacking Unix back since 1975 when ATT used to give it away
practically free to universities.  We were under the impression that
our work would remain free and available, because we were told ATT
can't sell software.  Then after the consent degree was promulgated,
suddenly all our work was owned by ATT and they were selling it as
their property as a trade secret.  Something is very wrong if the
laws permit such sleaze.  With Richard, such practices do not happen.

kim@amdahl.UUCP (Kim DeVaughn) (12/31/86)

In article <221@unirot.UUCP>, pooh@unirot.UUCP (One damn minute, Admiral) writes:
> 
> I still haven't heard whether anyone has heard of an IBM xedit
> mode for Emacs. . .

At a former place of employment, I had to make the transition from a
VM and XEDIT environment, to a UNIX(R) and EMACS (or vi) one.  It took
me all of 30 seconds to decide on EMACS over vi :-).

As part of learning how to use (and abuse) Emacs, I developed a set of
MLisp macros that provided much of the functionality of XEDIT ... edit
ring, block operations, and so forth.  Never could find a way to emulate
the prefix area short of hacking up the source, though (sigh).

It ended up being something over 600 macros (which is when I "discovered"
the hard coded limit on macros in the macro.h file).  I was just learning,
remember ... I could probably do it in only 300 macros now!

We were running on an 11/780 at the time, and it would take emacs many
seconds to come up ... which led to even more macros to handle and filter
a new csh buffer that would grab all my aliases, etc.

Anyway, though I wouldn't call it an XEDIT *mode* exactly, much of XEDIT
*can* be emulated with Emacs ... but there is a price to pay!

/kim


P.S.  This was using the Unipress flavor ... not GNU.



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