Re: Copyright Misuse Doctrine in Apple v. Psystar

[Hyman Rosen]

amicus_curious wrote:
> Those millions of users obtain free software and do nothing to earn the 
> privilege. That is an unbalanced system to be sure.

The creators of the software have not required that their
users do anything to "earn" the software. That is their
privilege. They do require that those who wish to modify and
distribute the code "earn" the right to do so, by distributing
under the same license.

> The fundamental premise of FOSS long ago was the notion that
> opening up the source for others to contribute would pay back
> the original developer by supplying back the improvements.
> That has long gone out of whack.

That might have been the premise of the Open Source movement, and
is definitely out of whack, but it is not the premise of the FSF.
The FSF believes that users of software should have the freedom to
run, read, modify, and share it. There is no notion in the GPL that
anyone gets "paid back" for software, or that this is a good way to
develop software, or anything like that. Free software is simply a
social good.