On 01/13/2013 10:44 AM, drew Roberts wrote: >> there would also be no way to require anyone to honor my intentions that my >> source code be made available to anyone that my software is distributed to. > > This bit is true. But without the corresponding ability to enforce > non-distribution of binaries how big of an issue would this be? To free software advocates, it'd be an enormous issue. The right to redistribute is only freedom #2. Freedom #1 is the right to inspect and change a program. Many of us could afford to do everything with proprietary software, but choose free software because we want control over what's running on our hardware whenever practical. (Or, if you're RMS, even if it's impractical.) "Free software" and "freeware" are two very different things. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html Of course, the absence of copyright law would not make EULAs go away; proprietary software makers would just make you sign a contract (which, depending on which legal venue you're in, can sometimes be effected by merely opening a box or clicking a link) saying you won't redistribute it before they distribute the software to you. Advocates of copyleft could do the same thing, though we'd lose a lot of our advantages over proprietary software in that case since you couldn't just throw ISOs everywhere. Rob _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
