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Comment by marcus_holmes | Hacker News Reader

I was with this right up to The Right to Modify.

If I create something, I get to say how people use it. That's the core of the wonderful proliferation of software licences.

If I don't want people to see the source code of something I write, either because I don't want to deal with the criticism or because I've hidden some malicious nasty in there, then that's my call. Anyone can choose not to execute my code on their machine, that's their call.

Anything else ends up enforcing a defacto GPL on the world.

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Without the Right to Modify, it is very difficult to guarantee any of the other rights I've listed. Most of the rights I list have provisions explicitly outlining that users have the right to circumvent DRM, captchas, and other technological locks that prevent them from exercising their rights.

Without the Right to Modify, anyone could restrict any of the other rights on this page just by flipping a few bits in software and calling it DRM. Imagine if a website operator could sue Gorhill because Ublock Origin circumvented anti-adblocking measures in clientside code.

The problem is realistically, DRM exists to prevent unlawful access and use. Your "right" narrowly avoids the topic by claiming users only should have the right to circumvent that which prohibits access they're legally entitled to.

However, imagine a term of service that only grants access to a website in exchange for viewing ads. (This is the implicit contract of ad-based web viewing from the beginning, but websites aside from some streaming video platforms have not really "enforced" the fact that users pay for content by viewing ads.)

> imagine a term of service that only grants access to a website in exchange for viewing ads

Lets first imagine that the term of service is fully understood by the users. The tracking is explained and understood, the trading of personal data, the auction of targeting advertisement to anyone, the lack of liability in case of malware. In that world it make sense that websites enforce the trade of access in return for all the above.

Until then we have the wild wild west that is online advertisement without regulation, liability or contract between the user and the publisher.

so your manifesto effectively says that any software licence that isn't GPL/WTF should be illegal?

Software licencing isn't DRM in my world... how are you equating them?

No, my manifesto says that a clause in a EULA that prevents an end-user from reverse-engineering or modifying a binary that is placed on their own computer for their own personal use should be unenforceable via legal means.

I'm not really talking about source code, let alone the GPL. You can still ship proprietary software, but you shouldn't be able to sue users for using it, examining it, or modifying it -- any more than you should be able to sue them for taking apart or modding a microwave oven or a ladder.

So I have the right to reverse-engineer the shipped binary, but no right to examine the source code? That doesn't make a lot of sense. It would save everyone a lot of effort if you just stipulated that all binaries must come with source (though, of course, that would still require the recipient to verify that the source matches the binary).

I agree with the microwave oven/ladder argument - we should be able to modify those, that makes sense.

I think the problem here is commercial re-use. If I make a modification to your source code, that I got from reverse-engineering a binary I purchased from you, should I be able to sell it?

After all, if I modify a ladder and resell it, I have to buy each unmodified ladder from the original manufacturer, so there's no problem. But I only need to buy one copy of code and I can resell it many times. Should I have to buy one copy from the original creator for every copy of the modified code I sell?

I separate copyright from the rights of an owner over an individual copy.

Think of it like a physical book. If I buy a physical book, I have the right to rip pages out of it, or rebind it with a new cover, or even scan it as a personal backup.

I also have the right to resale, so if I buy a book I can sell it to someone else, even if I've modified it (although I would need to destroy all of my own backups).

What I can't do is scan the book and start selling copies of it. That's covered by copyright.

In the same way, allowing someone to reverse-engineer and modify Photoshop, or even to share instructions on how to modify Photoshop, does not mean that they can turn around and start hosting copies of Photoshop downloads on their own servers and distributing them for free or for money.

Existing laws in the US cover this fairly well -- the problems I have are with EULAs that try to ban owner rights to modify their own software, and with the DMCA which makes it illegal to break DRM or tell people how to break it even if you're breaking it for a completely legal reason.

I don't want to get rid of copyright, but if you sell me an Kindle Ebook, and I break the DRM on that book to get it to load on my own Kobo reader, that should be legal. I don't believe an author has the moral authority to block something like that. It's not an obligation to distribute the source, or to allow anyone to do literally anything they want -- just to say that if content/code is executing on my device, I should be able to look at it and manipulate it. Once it leaves my device and re-enters the public sphere, feel free to start enforcing terms.

Yeah, I'm not sure "individual copy" actually applies to digital content. Because it's just a collection of bytes, it can be copied endlessly, and so it will. One copy is the same as a million copies.

If you buy a book and then burn it, it's gone, and you have to buy a new one. If you download a book from a bookstore, and then delete it, you can just download a new copy whenever you like. Booksellers don't make you look after an "individual copy".

I totally grok the DRM problem, but look at it like this: if you bought the Large Print version of a book, and then got new glasses and decided you didn't want that version any more, you don't have the right to swap it for a normal print version. Same with Kindle/Kobo - if you bought a book for your Kindle (agreeing to the T&C's that said it could only be viewed on a Kindle), and then decided to move to Kobo (something I have recently done, and yes it's very annoying), then do you really have the right to all your Kindle books on the Kobo?

But we're getting away from my initial objection, which is actually covered by copyright. Software licences are powered by copyright. And copyright says that I do have the power to stop you from modifying my creation, because it's my creation and I created it and it's mine to do with as I please. So if I licence my software under a licence that says "you can't modify this, you either use it as it is, or don't use it at all", then surely that's my right as its creator?

> Users have the right to break or circumvent geoblocks, DRM, and other technological mechanisms that would prevent them from discovering, viewing, and archiving information that they have lawful access to.

I would personally reword the end of the sentence to be "...discovering, viewing, and archiving any discoverable information." I do think the abolishment of copyright and other IP is an important and necessary step of our progress in the information age (though not one that I expect to happen in my lifetime). I agree that as authors we should have no obligation to distribute our content, but when we do, our choice is effectively "how many global internets would you like to release your information to? Options: 0 or 1." Personal ownership of property is important, and should be inviolable. Copies of information are not property, nor is information a finite resource that can be boxed up into an ownable piece of property. As a creator, I still have full control and "ownership" of all of my time and resources, as well as copies of information that I produce for myself. I do not maintain any ownership over identical copies of information I have produce that others manufacture for themselves, or redistribute, or acquire from a source other than me.

All of the guiding principles in this manifesto rightly approach the recognition of this core idea that all individuals must be free to interact with information how they will, and that individual interactions with information take precedence over government and corporate interests. Duplication of information is likely the most common interaction we have with information. It should have no special exception that allows a government to set up and maintain regimes that enforce the monopoly ownership and artificial scarcity of copies of information.

All of this being said, I appreciate the thoughtful compilation of all of these guiding principles into a manifesto, and believe that overall, it describes the proper way we should recognise individual rights in the digital age. Thank you!

What's wrong with the GPL? Maybe a de facto global GPL is good.

> What's wrong with the GPL?

One of the points ESR listed with hackers' ethical considerations (sorry, I can't find it ATM) says roughly that "No problem should ever need to be solved more than once."

The GPL forces people to look away, to keep shopping for solutions or to write their own. The GPLed solution which could have made their life easier is on the wrong side of an event horizon which prevents them from taking advantage and causes a problem (many problems!) to be solved more than once, because they don't wish to go there and stay there.

Code without that one severely inconvenient restriction is code that can be more useful to more people, if that matters to you.

edit: Hey, search engines are neat. http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe2

Oh, look! Item 5 in that section is all about how full of shit I really am, how droll... But the point stands. I once put a project on the shelf and promptly forgot about it because I needed some combination of µSD over SPI and FAT32 and 4-bit HD44780 LCD interfacing and these were doable with different already-published libraries for AVR chips, but if one of them was GPL then my whole project had to be 1) GPL, which I didn't want, or 2) never shared with anyone, which made it seem a waste of time. Arguably, I ought to have banged something out, made anything work, and then kept shopping for a proper replacement for that one lib, so it's still my fault, but the restriction was, and still is, somewhat demotivating.

>The GPL forces people to look away, to keep shopping for solutions or to write their own. The GPLed solution which could have made their life easier is on the wrong side of an event horizon which prevents them from taking advantage and causes a problem (many problems!) to be solved more than once, because they don't wish to go there and stay there.

That "event horizon" you're talking about is one that stops people from taking code that already exists, building on it to solve more problems, and... not letting anyone else use it.

I, too, believe that no problem should need to be solved more than once. The GPL is in part a tool to help ensure that.

I know that's the reasoning behind it. My problem is that it's still selfish, just a different flavor of selfishness from EULAs, and maybe falls under a different sense of the word protectionism... well, I can't quickly come up with a better one. It's all rather Western and not as noble as I used to think.

I want to give everyone all the same freedoms that the GPL guarantees, and I want to include freedom from the GPL. I don't want to be afraid of wrong people doing wrong things so that I'd be spending time and energy trying to stop them, especially not if it interferes with doing useful things for anyone. The Sqlite blessing is really neat.

I think... ideally, the GPL wouldn't be necessary, we'd have a strong software commons, and people wouldn't take advantage of it to exploit the rest of us. That's not the world we live in, though, and I see the GPL as an attempt to bootstrap a commons in a world that cares for profit above nearly anything else.

Is it selfish? Perhaps, in a way. I'm sure there are some who genuinely value the freedoms granted by more permissive licenses for their own sake, and who are principled enough to never take advantage of that and lock up the results. You may be one of them, and I can respect that position. I'm willing to bet most of those who strongly avoid the GPL are not.

> Anyone can choose not to execute my code on their machine, that's their call.

this is not even close to being true. Specially in the smartphone world.

If you don't want people to examine your software then don't give them your software.

I believe that's exactly what I said

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