Re: gpl licensing

[Alexander Terekhov]

I mostly agree with troll Steven. 

Stefaan A Eeckels wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 06 Dec 2006 08:59:12 +0000
> Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <rms@1407.org> wrote:
> 
> > Ter, 2006-12-05 às 18:49 -0600, John Hasler escreveu:
> > > Rui Miguel Silva wrote:
> > > > When you buy a piece of land, does it say your contract that it
> > > > becomes public property after 20 years (as in patents)?
> > >
> > > I can buy a lease on a piece of land that expires after 20 years.
> > > Nonetheless, the law recognizes that lease as property.
> >
> > The lease, not the land.
> 
> Of course, that would then only prove that intangibles, like the lease,
> can be owned, and hence are property.
> 
> I believe that the crux of the matter is that more and more of our
> economic activity has become intangible. We've become very efficient
> at producing food - barely a few percent of the population in Europe
> and the USA. Even if you take the services to the farming community
> into consideration (producing tractors and other farming implements,
> veterinary services etc.) the fact remains that we have to find gainful
> employment for 90% of the population. Add to that the increase in
> productivity of all manufacturing processes, and it's not difficult to
> see that we need a lot of new things to keep people gainfully employed.
> 
> Some of these things are material objects, such as cell 'phones, but
> even more of them are services. Almost all of them are in the category
> "nice to have" - people can survive quite well without texting, or
> emailing, or GPS devices.
> 
> The challenge for a society is to maintain a social structure that
> motivates people. Once you've put the food production of millions of
> people in the hands of a few tens of thousand, you need to make sure
> that they find value and motivation in what society offers them.
> Whether that is culture or cars, fancy clothes or holidays on tropical
> isles - society has to motivate enough people to produce what it needs
> to survive, or face extinction.
> 
> This means that somehow intangible "values" (such as sitting in
> meetings or playing a gig) have to be valued as much as a loaf of bread,
> or a steak. That way, we can all happily work at things we're good at,
> whilst acquiring tokens (money) that allow us buy food, clothes,
> lodging and all the objects and services that motivate us.
> 
> Software, recorded music, books, movies etc. all can be reproduced
> cheaply and easily, but are expensive to produce (have you ever
> considered how many people are involved in making a movie?). If you
> make it impossible for people to recoup the costs of producing the
> movie, because it's easy and cheap to copy a DVD, and the DVD is still
> there after you've copied it, how are you going to motivate people to
> pony up the money to pay wages to a film crew, set creators, costume
> designers, caterers etc?
> 
> This is why intangibles have to be property of sorts - because
> ultimately you will have to exchange them for food or clothes. The
> alternative is that only land will have real value. Welcome to the
> middle ages.
> 
> Of course the system is no longer well adapted to the current
> technological and social circumstances. Patents, for example, are still
> quite effective when the players are of equal size. The knowledge they
> contain becomes "public" and cross-license deals are signed. What they
> do not allow is smaller players to challenge the big ones. But don't
> forget that there were no really "large" (by today's standards)
> companies when the patent system was designed. So to a degree it still
> works as designed, and it's hard to fault a system for not catering
> for situations and technologies its designers could not even dream of.
> 
> So let's work at designing a better system - better adapted to our
> needs and technologies. But make sure that system supports the large
> majority of people who create nothing but intangibles, or you'd better
> buy yourself a nice, large, fertile plot, and lots of weapons to defend
> your property, because those of us who are left will be back to farming
> and fighting.
> 
> Take care,

regards,
alexander.