On March 21, 2019 11:55:04 AM UTC, Ansgar <ans...@debian.org> wrote: >As far as I know POSIX isn't a new and original interface that was >designed in a clean room; it (in large parts) documents interfaces that >were available in proprietary operating systems.
As long as the original vendors recognised the standard (eg by selling their own OS as POSIX compliant) or joined the standard body to lobby for their own extensions to be included, they wouldn't have much ground to complain. Through the standard's document they waived any copyright claim they could have against the competitors implenting such standard. Now, just to be clear, POSIX is not such a great standard (to use an euphemism :-D). But the point stands. Implementing a standard that exists to be implemented independently, does not require copyright permission, as it's a derivative work of the standard document itself. >Lots of free software also is very much inspired by proprietary works, >be they APIs, protocol or entire programs. True. Indeed the peace of true innovation in Free Software is only kept high by the most crazy hackers out there who actually try to invent new things. In the camp of Open Source instead, whereever there's actual innovation, corporations resort to patents. They SAY that it's just "defensive patent trolling" but you can never know what happens if your fork of their open source OS or browser get a chance of challenging their businesses model! So ultimately innovative Free Software hackers have no protection against bad actors that EEE their creations, exploiting their gift as free (highly qualified) labor. OTOH corporate open source is well protected in a number of ways (high technical complexity, social anathema on forkers and last but not least patents). This asymmetry is acceptable only if you think that profit is the ultimate goal of everything. Which is actually an opinion with many and strong supporters. It's the "Spirit of Capitalism" as Weber used to call it. But to those who follow a different ethics, who care about knowledge and freedom, this asymmetry is not acceptable at all. Because it let people exploit us, our gifts and our work. To us it's not even a sustainability issue: there is no price a corp could afford, the code is knowledge and it must be free. Giacomo
