[WSIS CS-Plenary] PCT and WGIG

[Beatriz Busaniche]

El dom, 16-01-2005 a las 11:36 +0100, Vittorio Bertola escribió:

> Uhm... I really don't understand. I used the term "modify" to refer to the 
> liberties promoted by the free software concept itself. Are you saying 
> that those liberties should apply to software, but not to ideas?


Sorry if I was not clear enough. Of course you and everybody are welcome
to take the ideas behind Free Software and improve on them. 
If you can convince us that your changes are indeed an improvement, you
can rest assured that they will become part of free software's ideary.
If you don't, of course, you can try to push your ideas on your own...
just please don't pretend that they are the ideas behind free software.

This has been done before: you mentioned CC, which is an attempt to
extrapolate free software ideas outside the field of software. We are
watching this development with great interest, and Larry Lessig is a
valuable recent addition to the FSF's board, but since CC does not apply
to software, we would not like it at all if purely-CC people went
around saying they represent free software. Another occasion in which
this happened was when some people felt that "freedom" was  too
uncomfortable a word, and decided to take it away from free software's
discourse. These people call themselves "open source advocates", and
they are welcome to elaborate on free software ideas, but both them and
we are very careful to keep the labels apart from each other.
Some other people are taking free software ideas and expanding them
towards the need for the complete and indiscriminated abolition of
copyright and patents... it's their call, as long as they don't pretend
it's the free software movement that wants that.

Same for you: I have no doubt that you can significantly improve on the
work done by the FSF over the last twenty years of intense and deep
technical and philosophical work, so please go ahead. Just don't go
around telling people that your ideas are those of the free software
movement before checking with us first, thank you.