Piecepack Pyramids

[Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@...>]

Forgot to CC: this after all...

Ron

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Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2002 15:07:23 -0700
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In-Reply-To: <20020604173846.48994@...>; from prisoner@... on Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 05:38:46PM -0400
From: Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@...>
Subject: ICE: Re: OT - Piecepack Pyramids
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On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 05:38:46PM -0400, Allen S. Firstenberg wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 02:10:05PM -0700, Ron Hale-Evans wrote:
> 
> (Piecepack list removed from cc) 

Piecepack list added to CC: again.

> I know this is now getting way off-topic,
> but I have to clarify something.
> 
> > First, you misunderstand the way I am using the word "free".  I mean
> > it in the sense of "free speech", not "free beer".  Thus, as most of
> > the rulesets I have seen for Icehouse games (at least the core games
> > in _Playing With Pyramids_) are copyrighted, they are not free,
> > because I could not legally take them, reprint them, and sell them.
> 
> I'm very confused.  By these definitions, all software published by the Free
> Software Foundation is not free.  They are copyrighted, and this copyright
> is backed by a very restrictive license.  This license is what grants people
> the right to freely examine the source, freely distribute the source, 
> freely sell the source, and more-or-less freely modify the source.

In the strictest legal sense, you are correct that software published
by the Free Software Foundation is copyrighted.  However, they
consider it to be "copylefted".  Consider this definition from the
glossary of the Emacs 19 manual, presumably written by Richard
Stallman:

  Copyleft: A copyleft is a notice giving the public legal permission
  to redistribute a program or other work of art. Copylefts are used
  by left-wing programmers to give people equal rights, just as
  copyrights are used by right-wing programmers to gain power over
  other people.

Copyleft is founded in copyright, in that someone who copylefts her
program must copyright it with a copyleft license notice.  However,
IMHO this is a legal technicality; someone who copylefts a program
gives away her exclusive rights to it.

> The Piecepack is a different creature completely - it is in the public
> domain and not covered by either a copyright or a license.  It is free in
> the sense of "free as air".  It is in the public domain, however, explicitly
> because someone/some group explicitly waived their copyrights.

Anything that is copylefted is also "free as air", hence the term
"free software".  I would argue that a copylefted work is freer than
something in the public domain, because someone cannot make change it,
then make their version non-free (as, for example, publishers often do
when they sprinkle a few footnotes onto a public-domain text such as
_Romeo and Juliet_ and re-copyright it).

Ron H-E

-- 
         Ron Hale-Evans ... rwhe@... & rwhe@...
           Center for Ludic Synergy, Seattle Cosmic Game Night, 
Kennexions Glass Bead Game &  Positive Revolution FAQ: http://www.ludism.org/
Home page & Hexagram-8 I Ching Mailing List: http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/
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-- 
         Ron Hale-Evans ... rwhe@... & rwhe@...
           Center for Ludic Synergy, Seattle Cosmic Game Night, 
Kennexions Glass Bead Game &  Positive Revolution FAQ: http://www.ludism.org/
Home page & Hexagram-8 I Ching Mailing List: http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/