Comments on: Free as in freedom

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:05:06 +0000

Thank you for updating your position. That’s a rare thing to see in online arguments, and you deserve to be congratulated.

By: nixternal

nixternal — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:44:32 +0000

Aaron, you are correct about the licensing. I just posted a public apology because my Konqueror has ad blocking turned on so I didn’t see all of the ads on the site. Wow do I feel like an idiot on that one.

If you wrote an application licensed under the GPL, then the license was violated, either by producing a binary without the source, or changing the license to one of a proprietary license, you would expect things to get fixed.

Seeing as he doesn’t link directly to the source on nixforce.com he is in violation of all copyleft licenses.

That site does send tracebacks because I see it in my spam filters all of the time. If you are using Akismet I don’t think you will see the spam messages, but if you use the Bad Behavior plugin for WordPress you will see the tracebacks. Right now there are about 1,000 of them in my spam filters, and I always delete them Maybe I shouldn’t. Heh, as a matter of fact there is a traceback from nixforce regarding my previous post.

By: Ubuntu | Jordan Mantha: Free as in …

Ubuntu | Jordan Mantha: Free as in … — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:33:13 +0000

[...] Hola Rich, [...]

By: Zonker

Zonker — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:58:24 +0000

What is the difference between someone aggregating your blog or someone finding it via Google anyways? One way or the other they are going to find your information. If you subscribe your posts to a planet, you are putting your posts out in the public in the first place. If you don’t want your blog syndicated, I suggest you remove the RSS feeds from the site.

Primarily that some sites like to grab RSS feeds solely for the purpose of creating “splogs” to generate AdSense (or similar) revenue. While I’m perfectly happy to let anyone read my blog via RSS, I’m not happy with sploggers taking my content to make money off of.

Linking to and/or posting summaries of content is fair game, but wholesale copying and aggregation shouldn’t be done unless the copyright holder/blogger gives approval. I’d be thrilled to see my blog carried on one of the Planets, but I’d be a bit annoyed if it just showed up without any notice. It’d be a bit presumptive, plus some topics I write about wouldn’t be germane to any of the FOSS Planet aggregators, and I might not want a recap of my weekend showing up unexpectedly on a site read by far more people than my own blog.

By: Pensées de LaserJock Free as in … «

Pensées de LaserJock Free as in … « — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:33:13 +0000

[...] Free as in … June 11th, 2007 — laserjock Hola Rich, [...]

By: Joseph James Frantz

Joseph James Frantz — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:18:42 +0000

I am not a lawyer, but I thought works that were on the Internet without any such disclaimer or copyright notice were in fact public domain?

Everything is automatically copyrighted once it is placed in fixed medium. So a speech for instance is not copyrighted. But a speech that has been recorded or written down is copyrighted. The lack of a copyright notice does not cause an item to enter into the public domain. However it is good practice anyhow.

Regarding Mike’s comment, that is not entirely accurate. There are certain things that are not copyrightable, for instance recipes, lists, single statements. However, regardless of ‘creativity’, once you put something in a fixed medium, it is copyrighted.