FYI, I am on record as agreeing with you on this point - I wrote about it in my book in the context of feeling that some GPL advocates and the GPL FAQ stretched the bounds of copyright too far - thus creating a negative policy outcome even while trying to do something good for the GPL.
However, in the context of where we are with regard to Oracle v. Google, I may at some point need to eat crow on that whole discussion and say that the GPL FAQ was mostly correct. Mostly. :) Thanks, Van On Thu, Jan 31, 2019 at 12:11 PM Bruce Perens <br...@perens.com> wrote: > I think it's important to make a point about the extension of copyright. > In the case of Open Hardware, licenses are crafted which intend to > copyright not only schematics (which are functional things and thus not > copyrightable) but the *implementations of hardware from those > schematics.* > > This is an obvious extension of copyright law beyond where it has been > applied so far. The risk in such a thing is that courts could consider it > valid, going along with the innovation of industry as they often do, and > then suddenly copyright would be applied to every schematic in a book, and > electronic designs which we today copy with impunity, and we'd have to > license all of our schematics everywhere. > > This would have a tremendous stifling effect on the practice of > electronics, especially by individuals and non-profit groups such as the > Open Hardware projects themselves. > > This is why I abandoned work on Open Hardware licensing. > > In addition, I think there's a principle here. Extension of copyright is > bad for Open Source, even if it helps us enforce our licenses more > effectively. It will always work against us to a greater extent that it can > be put to work for us. > > Thanks > > Bruce > _______________________________________________ > License-discuss mailing list > License-discuss@lists.opensource.org > > http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org >
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