Re: Please explain the FSF copyright assignment thing

["Andreas Röhler" <andreas.roehler@online.de>]

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On 19.07.2017 05:32, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>    > Enforced freedom? nobody there was obligated to benefit from freedom.
>    > What was enforced was the obligation for Cisco to transfer to their
>    > clients the freedom they decided to enjoy.
>
> You stated that very well.
>
> The purpose of copyleft is to defend freedom for all users of our
> software.  To defend their freedom requires preventing middlemen
> (Cisco in that case) from stripping off the freedom when they
> redistribute the software to others.
>
> In other words, when we distribute Emacs to A,
> and A redistributes Emacs to B, C and D, copyleft protects
> the freedom of B, C and D by requiring
> A to pass along Emacs to them with the full four freedoms.
>

Are two major issues with that idea.

1) the body of enforcement
2) the probability of involuntary license violations

For the latter: it looks like distributions of Emacs itself violated the 
GPL, right?
The reason is simple: With growing complexity it will be probable, that 
binaries and sources differ at some point.
Than the distributor risks to be at the mercy of the owner.

Now if a violation occurs, who will be the judge?: The very kind of 
institutions which otherwise found water-boarding a legal thing. Can't 
see how such a proceeding will match freedom.

Whilst Emacs itself remains an excellent tool.

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