CLTB :: Copyrights and Intellectual Property.

Copyrights, proprietary software and algorithm patents are destructive restrictions on natural rights to share knowledge, they broke the chain of accumulated scientific progress. They are introduced to protect authors, but indeed that was just an excuse to give publishers (not innovative authors) more power over people freedom to have more control just to make money. GNU introduce a different way to protect authors right and to give the public freedom they deserve by introducing a reversed content copyright license (copyleft) and by providing a superior quality software so that proprietary software are no more needed. GNU/Linux is a success of the community driven development, independent software support industry now exists, and now third world has a chance to develop.

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1.1.1. Human resources and innovation.

Natural resources are the fortune of the past, nowadays it's negligible factor, natural resources could be rare or need a Political decisions (like Uranium). In third world, the industry that target the local market is not effective because they are too small, and the exporting industry is also not feasible because they import highteck row materials (eg. Medical industry) then process it with conventional methods by just repackaging it into smaller packages(the added value is about zero)! the only benefit is the decrease unemployment. For that reason the conventional industry is not strategic, for example consider the good Indian-Israeli relationships although that one third of Indian population are Muslims, and it's nuclear neighbor has not yet admitted the existence of Israel, they gamble with a civil war on one hand and a nuclear war on the other, but for what? What left for the third world except the tourism and entertainment which is not suitable for the middle east (consider number of tourists to Evil tower compared to the 5000 years old pyramids in Egypt), or on the other hand the Intellectual highteck industry based on human resources, or so called knowledge based economy, that's why the UN says that the open source is the only hope for developments, a subproject of the United Nations Development Programme (see www.undp.org) is called International Open Source Network (see www.iosn.net)

Creativity making is not a strategic industry but it's the row material of Intellectual highteck industry, we have to make creative minds (in this context I'm not talking about art or literature creativity), creative minds do not come from nothing, we have to invest making them, the first step is reforming the educational system based on qualitative not quantitative measurements (our current education system is based on the percentage of passed students as a measurement of educational strategy success, sometimes the percentage is pregiven for the teacher no matter how good are the students), the educational system has to promote innovation and inhibit the photocopy memory and the pregiven template rules, here some real world examples (I'm a school teacher now!):

We need to break the fear of new experiments and to come up with new things that no one ever think of, stop telling our children things like "if you don't know it, don't try it", "everything is discovered" or "everything that can be invented has been invented" (Charles Duell, Director of U.S. Patent Office in 1899) break proverbs like "death with a group is mercy" or "if your people are crazy, your mind is useless" because if Newton thought this way he would eat the apple.

We have to give creative minds motives (they need not be material motive), at lest to respect them and use what they did to encourage them to do more, if we did not do that they will find other things to fill thier time.

1.1.2. Intellectual properties and copyrights.

How to encourage innovation ? Reforming eductional system is a factor to have people who could innovate, but the ability is not enough, "Why would someone take a year to write novel, if he could buy one for a few dollars ?" let's change the question to be "How to encourage innovation provided that innovators exist ?". Quoted from "Why Software Should Be Free" by Richard Stallman: "There are some lines of work that few will enter except for money; road construction, for example. There are other fields of study and art in which there is little chance to become rich, which people enter for their fascination or their perceived value to society". "Intellectual product" making process needs too long expensive researches, we have been told (eg. by Software Publishers Association - SPA) that to have "intellectual products" we need to recognize "intellectual properties" and to introduce new ways to protect author "rights", we have been told that no one will innovate unless he is well payed in return. We are going to discuss this claim.

Long long ago there was no such thing as intellectual properties, one write book, others copy it by hand and sell it to make money! What authors cares about was to deliver their ideas and to take part in humanity progress. Many great artists and artisans of medieval times didn't sign their names to their work (a painting is more likely to be forged if it has a signature!), to them the name of the artist was not important. Scientists used to publish their work to the public. Scientific papers allow people all around the world to repeate, replicate, reproduce, adapt, develope and enhance scientific experments. Reproducibility is the key difference between science and pseudoscience. Scientists used to do what ever it takes for their ideas, not only when it's about money, we all know the story of Galileo and the Catholic church. Scienitists restrict themselves with ethics about copying work of others, called "honest" copying (admit that this work belong to that person, and never modify any thing without announcing that you did so) they feel obliged that they have to acknowledge original author (eg. in "credits" or "thanks" sections)

Scientific researches become more complex and consume more money, life becomes complex too, what scienitists do for living ? here comes the need for someone to adopt the idea into a product and make money of it and give the author a share or a salary; that is the publisher. In such context publisher refere not only to usual books publishers but also include software publishers (sometimes media call them software makers or vendors but this is not accurate), the same way the word author includes programmers. Publishers are not stupid to put their money in a field for nothing, it's not their ideas, they need not have scientific background in the field they publish, they don't have a message to deliver. Publihers want to protect their investment, mainly from other publishers and make it possible not only to make living but also to be rich. They use the term "intellectual product" to refere not to the medium or device that hold or implement the idea but to the idea itself, they want their intellectual product to be ready for the mass market, they push on governments to acquire restrictions on copying or reproducing the intellectual product by others, and they get what they want.

Nowadays, everywhere, we have copyright systems (in some countries they call it author rights), with this system the copyright holder (called the owner) claims all right related with the intellectual product (ideas, books, software, ...etc) so that they belongs to him (not that he own the material having it, but the idea itself), this is done by contacting a governmental institute for this purpose (eg. in Jordan it's the national library). When you buy a book or a CD, then you don't own that intellectual product (intellectual property is given to you when the holder sign it over to you, which is not our case), what you think that you "buy" when you pay money for intellectual product (book or CD) is the license to use the product (you are called "user" or "licensee" not owner), when you buy a book, you buy the paper (without what is written on them) and the restricted permission to use intellectual product (read what is written on the book), regarding programs, you are handled media (disks) to be yours without the software on it and a license to use the software with some restrictions, in both cases there are restrictions on using it, because it (the license) does not give you the right to copy or rent the disks (the disks you own has software that does not belong to you), you are not allowed to resell or modify it unless you have a written permission from the owner that is the copyright holder which need not be the creative author, for example, it could be a book publisher, software publisher

Warning

Pay attention to the terminology used in this context, the owner is not who pay money to get and use the product, he is the copyright holder, if you buy a software CD then copy it with your copier on an empty CD that belongs to you, the resulted copy is not yours. The one who pay money (or any other form of rewarding) to get the product is called user or licensee.

A problem raised from people registering copyrights on things created by others who are too lazy or busy to do that first, or on things from folklore. Similar problem with trademarks on too common words like "sport" or even a single letter "X", imagine "What if" is a registed trademark! This problem happened with Linux, a company claimed trademark on this word, some lawyers volunteered to give it back to Linus Torvalds the real author of Linux, that's why it's a registed trademark to Linus Torvalds and he is not happy with that.

After the owner get copyrights then any use for that product is forbidden except with an explicit prior permission, this permission is called license, the owner designs a license and sells it. Owners sell the restricted permission to use the intellectual product, money payed by the client to get the product, is to allow him to use it, this mean that he did not buy it he just buy the permission! The terms of the license differ from one publisher to another, from product to another (from the same publisher) and even between offers for the same product, there are a default implied license for products that do not have one (specially books) it usually goes like this "no part of this product may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher" books license allow many people to read the same book as long as nobody reproduce it (by copying,...etc.), it allow books to be put in public libraries, ...etc. A different less common license for books (and software source code) called non-disclosure agreement goes much farther where it's illegal to open the book in presence of someone else (unless maybe if he is blind!) and it's illegal to tell anybody whatever you have learned from it.

Far more restrictive licenses than usual books copyrights are software End User License Agreements (EULAs) where the owner is selling the permission to use the product, but here the permission is exclusively given to the end user this mean "I promise to deprive my neighbor of this program so that I can have a copy for myself." (quoted from "Why Software Should Be Free" by Richard Stallman) he do NOT have the right to sell, copy, rent, ...etc. such software may not be put in a public library! (the version included with books are usually demonistration version with less functionality and different license). EULAs specify how to use the product (they sell the restricted permission...), they could deny any trial to disassemble the product, understand how it works (called reverse engineering) or even more they deny fixing it or discover whether it's broken or not! it's a black box you have to accept it AS IS (imagine an EULA TV), I'm not kidding, one of Microsoft Windows 98 (or any other products) EULA's terms says: "You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the SOFTWARE PRODUCT" more over you are not allowed to take a screenshot of it!! Some countries like EU put restrictions on how far they could go with EULA's terms for example they cancel the reverse engineering term.

Governments usually put a limit on how far those terms could go, they could cancel some extreme terms, the owner could reply by adding "if any term is not applicable at your country then it's forbidden to use it there", other owners could suspend the inapplicable terms, an example of those terms that the owner may disclaim any responsibilities for damages cased from using the product or give any warranty about that, and some countries force the responsibility and forbid selling things that way.

EULAs put all responsibilities on the end user, the one who pay for software "piracy" is the poor end user who is fooled by a perfect verbatim copy made by a real "pirate" who is not covered by the terms of this license, copying of EULA software is illegal, the so called "pirate" are punished by laws but software publishers, unexpectedly, don't care about them because they work as salesmen for them (the software publisher takes license fees from the end user even if the "pirate" is caught), that's way there are massive software investment where there are high rate of "piracy" like Israel and some Asian countries.

But the worst of all are patents on algorithms or formulas in such way that forbids development or even using them or any product that uses those algorithms or formulas without the owner permission, the difference here is that they are on the algorithm not the implementation, this mean that they own implementations done by others! for example, if someone owns a patent on an algorithm to encode sound (to be able to save it digitally in smaller files) and call it A format algorithm and write a program to play or record sound files with it, then another one writes a program to play files encoded with A algorithm even if he uses other methods without seeing the code of the owner, then he needs the permission of the owner to run his own program and in the first place he needs permission to write his program, in other words if you write a program that uses patented algorithm then your program is not yours, you need (payed) permission to just use a program you write! If a company developed a patented television broadcasting method; an algorithm to modulate signal in radio waves, then television makers are not allowed to make televisions that can receive channels uses this algorithm, even if they know it independently (or by reverse engineering), imagine a television written on it "compatible with CNN" or "BBC not supported". If someone wants to develop something that depends on patented algorithm then he has to get the owner written permission before doing any thing, this mean if someone has an innovation that depends on patented algorithm that it's owner refuse to give him permission then the new innovation is lost and it dies before it get born. A few countries allow this type of patents like USA but most countries restrict patents to exclude algorithms and formulas, for example (at the time of writing this section) European and Arab countries do not give or recognize patents on algorithms and formulas this mean that you can use or develop patented algorithms or software that utilize it written by others without permission of patent owner in Europe (you are not allowed to use owned software without permission but here we talk about algorithm or programs it's author is other than the patent owner). Thank God, Jordan (my home land) do not recognize algorithm patents, but people specially copyright bureau employees don't understand why I'm happy to know that as an author myself. Although software idea is just an algorithm, some countries that do not recoginize algorithm patents, do recoginize Software idea patents (usually refered as software patents).

Become confused about those three laws (Copyrights, patents and trademarks) ? The following quote from Richard M. Stallman (on www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml) make it clear: "Copyright law was designed to promote authorship and art, and covers the details of a work of authorship or art. Patent law was intended to encourage publication of ideas, at the price of finite monopolies over these ideas--a price that may be worth paying in some fields and not in others. Trademark law was not intended to promote any business activity, but simply to enable buyers to know what they are buying".

1.1.3. Does intellectual properties encourage innovations ?

We have discussed legal issues related to copyright laws, we are going to discuss their impact on innovations. Owners claims that all disadvantages of their very restrictive licneses are negligible or less importent when compared to the "only" other choice; that if they are not given those rights nobody will provide us with "intellectual products" (eg. software). Everybody knows that considering intrests of the public to be negligible while interests of a few owners to be importent is a very bad idea, but we are told it's the only way to get things done, we'll see if this is correct.

An offtopic example of how could recognizing "intellectual property" be very harmful is patented Aides medicine needed in south Africa where medicine factories there have the technology to produce them but they don't have the patents owner's permission to do that, ironically some of the patent owners present themselves as charity makers by raising small funds to few patients compared to the fortune they get because of the patent. We have been told that we should ignore those disadvantages because if there are no owners then there are no intellectual products, no Aides medicine, no software to be translated and no software industry in the first place, we are going to discuss this claim.

Capitan Kirk in the science ficition TV show "Startrek" says: "Without freedom of choice there is no creativity." and if we value software (or other intellectual products) more than freedom we will lose our freedom then we will lose software, not just according to Mr. William Somerset Maugham (English playwright, novelist, and short story writer, 1874-1965) saying but also because of the accumelated nature of science. The terms of proprietary software licenses allow fewer people to exclusively develop the product, others have got to ask for prior payed permission, in other words they limit development instead of encouraging it. Where there are patents on algorithm, formulas or software there are no science accumulation, to develop any new intellectual product, for sure it depends on something previously discovered, Isaac Newton (famous mathematician and physicist) once said (about his achievements): "If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants", if any part of the dependency is patented, the chain is broken.

Quoted from GNU Coding Standards (by Richard M. Stallman and others): "A large portion of any non-fiction book consists of facts, (...) and these facts are necessarily the same for everyone who writes about the subject", because GNU is copylefted, I can quote from them without asking for permission (as long as, I follow their FDL copyleft license), but if it's a usual copyrighted document, the only way to include those facts in my book, without violating the copyright laws, is to rewrite them, I could write: "large part of a non-fiction book consists of facts, (...) and these facts are the same necessarily for everybody concerning that subject", this is how companies find work arounds for copyrights and patents, the same thing is true for software applications, bacause they are algorithms expressed in a computer language instead of mathematical symbols or a natural human language, which does not differ from the non-fiction book issue. When a company needs a patented algorithm owned by others, they just reinvent it from scratch, based on the same principle, for example MP3 is a patented algorithm for encoding audio based on "Fourier sine series" a mathematical method to write any function as a summation of sines, MP3 saves first some terms of the series by storing some parameters, on the other hand OGG is a free replacement having the same quality, they may (I say MAY) replace "Fourier sine series" with any mathematical equivalent like "Fourier Cosine series" or just change the order of the stored parameters, notice how companies do not compete to provide new innovations they all are busy, reinventing the wheel!! If you are developing a video format, then you need to save audio along with it, but MP3 is patented -- then you have to get permission from them (and pay fees if any) or reinvent all what it depends on, for example MPEG video format uses MP3 algorithm to save sound along with video, since MPEG and MP3 are from the same owner they need no permission, but others need that permission or reinvent MP3, that's what OGM video format did by using OGG to save audio. Nowadays companies are reinventing each others product while if it's not patented, it's enough to be done once and used by others, and save time and money for new innovations. Only those who owns patents are allowed to develop, research, or think on any thing related to the patent, others have to pay for permission or reinvent.

So we could conclude that proprietary software owners do not make profits by selling goods nor providing a service, they don't provide community with good software it needs, but instead from depriving information from the majority of the public. In the Announcement of The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource, Richard Stallman said: "The World Wide Web has the potential to develop into a universal encyclopedia covering all areas of knowledge, and a complete library of instructional courses. This outcome could happen without any special effort, if no one interferes. But corporations are mobilizing now to direct the future down a different track--one in which they control and restrict access to learning materials, so as to extract money from people who want to learn"

Owners are pushing us to believe in the "natural rights of authors", they introduce the program as a result of dedecated work by the author that no other author capable of doing it in the same spirit, they consider programs he wrote as his sons, he won't give away his source codes no matter how much you pay him, they give us an emotional argument goes like this: "I put my sweat, my heart, my soul into this program. It comes from me, it's mine!", you should know that the software is usually copyrighted by the company (publisher) that the author works for, in other words the author indeed signed over that soul (source code) to them for a small salary! that's why this is just an emotional argument, programmers break it when it suits them, another flew in this argument is that it's based on the assumption that a signle author is more important than the rest of the world which is not inevitable, keep on mind that software is not a material, if you take it the author won't lose it. Copyrights are not natural rights they are acquired rights limiting the natural rights of copying, sharing and cohesion, the natural right of being free, 14 century ago Omar ibn Alkhatab said "when had you (how dare you) taken freedom of people while they all are born free?!"

1.1.4. The other choice.

Could we have innovations without giving up our freedom ? the answer is YES! Most people thinks that good things in general should not make money, good things are not applicable, in other words only bad ideas deserve to live! in third world the controled media telling stories about good guys willing to be doctors to cure poor people free of charge or investors just invest to employ poor unqualified people that do nothing. I'm not talking about having charitable software publishers, charitable companies are a big lie! companies are there to make money. It's a very dangerous phenomena to have charitable companies, now we could see many companies that trade a charitable case, having names like : the national company to support people with disabilities, Naational football supporting Corp. and many companies raising money for cancer, imagine there are a company that made it's own women rights conference (without any participation of Women rights foundations). Because they either want to become broken and badely affect the national economy, or they lie to get money for a purpose then give it to it's employees and stockholders, governments should stop such companies. It's natural for a company to make profits and donate charitable foundations.

The idea of open source is there since the invention of compter (maybe before :-) ), there are many companies that publish their work and yet make money. Even enemies of open source use parts of open source software and adapt it, for example parts of Microsoft Explorer was taken from Mosaic (see "about" in it)

Authors who don't like their ideas to be locked in copyright cages publish them in the Public domain (aka Open domain), like most Mathemticaal formulas, Physical theories, and many algorithms (eg. Numerical analysis algorithms) they are published by universities (on the Internet, for example) to be used without any restriction even by commercial companies, those authors are volunteers, works for the government or researh centers, in other words they are not intended to make money from it, those high quality intellectual products could be used by others to develop a properietary derived product that ends the sequence. Public domain software are not copyrighted, a similar approach done by many universities is BSD styled copyright licenses (they are copyrighted), where any one is allowed to copy, reproduce, develop it (binary or source code) as long as he: First, preserve the author name and the copyright notice. Second, he may not use the name of the author or the product to promot his derived work. Notice how it did not put any restriction on development (anyone is a allowed to make a closed proprietary derived work). Western advanced world universites was doing many researches sponsored by companies that could make use of research, then the university release it to the public (to the company and others) with a free lincense similar to BSD (B is for Berkeley - California university). Nowadays scientists are no more publishing their researches they publish what makes us enlightened without giving us the ability to to do what they did, now those universites are part of blocking science, when a research is just about to be complete and usable, they call it "finished" and sell it exlusively to a company that do the finial trivial step and make it usable and monopolise it.

The success of Open source remained individual specially that the freedom of Public domain or BSD is absolutely unrestricted freedom! in such a way that this free product could be reused and blocked. Until the Free Software Foundation (see www.fsf.org) is shown in 80s of 20th century, with it's GNU project (GNU is Not Unix see www.gnu.org) founded by Prof. Richard M. Stallman who came up with the idea of free software.

Tip

In each language the more used term the more synonyms it has, for example in Arabic we have many words that mean sword (if listed they form a small book), lion, camel, love, courage, because those words are part of our environment or the way we think. Ironically in English there are no adjective word which mean free (as freedom) withno ambiguity, free could be as "free to speek" and "free lunch", that way free software companies uses "open source" even though they are "free" (because the word free gives bad impression that this is a low quality software provided as a demonstration), words like open or lebarated do not have the same meaning. It seems that freedom is not part of the English speeking civilizations way of thinking.

FSF publish copyright licenses called copyleft (like the GNU General Public License, see GPL appendix), their philosophy is that the software should have no owners and no copyrights, but to be realistic instead of asking the government to change the law, the author gets a copyright and license the program to every one according to a reversed content copyright license (like those from GNU) that gives you (the user) the free right to use, share, sell, rent, distribute, modify ,...etc. without the need of the author's permission, provided that you never block the source code of it or derived work based on it (derived does NOT mean resulted from running it) and make it (the source) available for no charge or you may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy of the source, to cover the cost (copying fees), also you have to admit the favor of the original author (so you don't remove his name,...), this is based on the principle that "you get what you pay for" (the key word here is "get", it becomes yours).

Warning

In Islamic ages the teacher's permission is required to allow his student to deliver his knowledge but this has nothing to do with the required publisher's permission in copyrighted licenses nowadays, they were something like practicing certificate (specially because the teacher was not allowed to take money from students at all) they were more about the permission for the student to speek in the name of his teacher, while permission in properietary licenses is about the price. Copyleft licenses like GPL consider consistency and the original reputation by making a distinction between verbatim copying and the creation on a modified/derived work where in the second case the author of the modified should announce clearly that he has changed the files and the date of any change in a way that will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.

Tip

Transparent doccument is a computer readable file consists of sequence of printable characters (alphabet letters,numbers, punctuation markes,...etc but not bell ring) splitted into lines by LF (line feed) characters, that's make it human readable too. Files that uses control characters (in ASCII they are below 32) like ASCII code 7 which is beep alert (bell ring), use other separator than line feed or represent some numbers or data in binary format (zeors and ones) so you can't understand this file without filtering or preprocessing.

The idea of GNU GPL is based on responsible freedom and equal rights, GPL programs are copyrighted and licensed to guarantee your freedom with some restrictions made to assure that every body receive equal rights and no one deny you these rights or ask you to surrender the rights, some GNU documentations say: "We want to make sure that you have the right to give away copies of our free software, that you receive source code or else can get it if you want it, that you can change source code files or use pieces of them in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things. To make sure that everyone has such rights, we have to forbid you to deprive anyone else of these rights. For example, if you distribute copies our software, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must tell them their rights. Also, for our own protection, we must make certain that everyone finds out that there is no warranty for anything in our software distribution. If these programs are modified by someone else and passed on, we want their recipients to know that what they have is not what we distributed, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on our reputation".

There are lesser free licenses (fit more for commercial desire) for exmaple QT license from www.trolltech.com that the product (QT library) is free for making free open source usage and require buying commercial license for commercial purposes, but the product in both cases is the same, this mean it's not freeware nor shareware. You should not confuse free software and freeware or shareware the last two are low quality, less functional, demonstrating evaluation versions or for temporary usage programs while free software are of superior high quality.

There are many sites that offer hosting and support for free software development projects, for example www.sourceforge.net (or www.sf.net for short), while they use the term open source (as defined by OSI) to refere to free software. FSF launched a similar site https://savannah.gnu.org. There are free documentation, and now we have a free entire encyclopedia, see www.wikipedia.org (English: http://en.wikipedia.org) that is released under terms of GNU FDL which allow you to use, copy, print, modify, ...etc it has more than a million of scientific and literature articles! now we have Free software, free documentation, free books, free hardware design (see free intellectul property sites like www.opencores.org, www.f-cpu.org and www.fpgacpu.org) and maybe medicine!

To defend having owners they (eg. SPA) compare having owners VS. having no software! they tell us that we have to choose between giving them the right to take away our freedom or having no software, in other words having more good software, thus social utility of it, is linked with protecting those rights, the key to disprove this falsification is to remove this linkage between having more better programs to be developed (no matter how it would be distributed) on one hand and then how it would be distributed for better social utility assuming it has been developed, now it's clear that we could develop more and better programs with no owners this is a fact (eg. GNU systems) because developing free programs are much easy where everyone is allowed to modify and develop and there is no need to start from scratch and reinvent the wheel as in proprietary software, on the other hand programs would be utilized better without owners, free software have more users because they are distributed freely, every body could copy and redistribute them.

Free software is not about the price nor it's about the access to the source code. It's more about freedom, having the source opened is not enough because it could come with an agreement that forbids one from modifying it or showing it to others, in other words, FSF warn us from open non-free software. Open Source Definition (OSD) as defined by Open Source Initiative (OSI, see www.opensource.org) which is very close to FSF's freedom definition as regard to software (refere to www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) because OSD is based on Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) but use the term open source when marketing free software because the word "free" (in English) gives wrong impression that it's in terms of price not freedom. Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. Many commercial organizations publish their source code to the public with non-free license, when they care more about spreading and being a maket standard, for example, many Sun's software are licensed under Sun Community Software License (SCSL) although it premit access to the source it's not a free software (according to The Free Software Definition by FSF and DFSG definition by Debian), and it's not open source software (according to OSD by OSI), "The SCSL even goes so far as to define any implementation of a Sun specification as a 'Modified Work'. Basically, this means that if you implement any part of the new 1.2 API or Jini API, even from scratch, Sun will own your implementation and you will have to pay them for the right to use it" quoted from Debian Java FAQ by Javier Fernandez-Sanguino Pena in section 2.3 about license concerns related to Java 2 SE (JDK 1.2), "It is not compatible with Free Software for several reasons, and agreeing to this license (e.g. by downloading source covered by the SCSL) will make it impossible for you to contribute to free software clean-room implementations. According to Sun, this includes using documentation and API specifications available only under SCSL".

Warning

As you may have noticed, I mix on purpose between free software and open source, because in OSD, open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. but FSF strongely objects on using "open source" term as an alternative of "free software" since it hides the goal of freedom, and suggests Libre Software to remove the ambiguity, again this problem is raised because some limitation of English language where free could mean zero-cost.

1.1.5. Independent software support industry.

Software need not be yours to make money from them, If the idea of free software did not allow making money then it would disappear. Free Software is not an imotional idea. There are many companies (besideds "charity" orginizations) working in the field of free software and they do make money, the question is how ? who will buy from them if any one could build it from source or get it free of charge or for low price from any one who buy it ? won't anyone who buy it copy it and sell it in a way that affect the original company ?

Many decades ago, professor Richard M. Stallman told us about the formation of the large "independent software support industry" as main economic sector when free software becomes prevalent, it seems that this industy is now formed, this industry is based on offering commercial support (ie. post-selling services) for software written by others, where companies competes making programs, written by the public, better and give them back to the public. Governments and large companies won't buy a CD from the shelf because they want support(eg. by phone), special unconventional configurations, printed manuals, training courses and periodic checks, there are many who can do that (because the source is available), but who invest more and involved more in writing the code, knows better how to offer that, and assumed to serve those clients better as the proveb says "Maaka residents know it's roads better". Take any Linux related company and see how it makes money, for example Mandriva (formerly known as Mandrake) makes money from non-free membership of their club (payed service), training courses, selling computers with Linux pre-installed, selling high quality DVDs (since DVD writer is not yet common) and many more. Free software companies are competing not combating, they compete to offer better software and better support without blocking software from the public, for example adapting a free software for specific local language, a small local company could do it better than a large foreign company, both know how because at least they have the source (besides documentations). Another example, Red Hat has released many tools under GNU GPL, like it's package manager RPM, although many of it's competitors will use them! because they provide a service, more people using this software, more people will need the service.

And just for the records, many of Linux giant companies was a small place and a few engineers, but in a couple of years they are playing with millions, for example, Red Hat products like RHEL competes with the highest solution from the largest properietary Unix companies (many people belives that it will replace Solaris!), another example Mandrake (now renamed to Mandriva) was just about to be broken in 2002, but in 2004 it's capital reaches 3 million euro just in two years! Free software and open source is considered the last hope of third world to develop.

When free software becomes prevalent, there will be fewer programmers, fewer companies dedcated only to produce software, but then fewer programmers are required to satisfy the demand because the productivity level of each programmer is much more what it's with proprietary software, a programmer is not forced to reinvent everything and start from scratch, he could adapt existing programs for customization, and the usefulness of the program is far more because the usage of the program is not limited and it could be redistributed by anyone, this is the same way how fewer farmers now could deliver more food to the consumers because of advanced agricultural technology. The question now if there are fewer or no software specialized companies who will employee programmers? Besides independent support companies we have Governments (the .gov sites, for example the SELinux by NSA, see www.nsa.gov), research centers and universites (.edu sites, like most of BSD related programs, eg. bind DNS server), hardware manufacturers (like IBM and Sun Microsystems, eg. both donates GNOME) they do that because software makes the hardware works! "Thus spake the master programmer: ``Without the wind, the grass does not move. Without software, hardware is useless.''" (The Tao Of Programming by Geoffrey James)

Internet allow free software projects to be carried out by volunteers from all over the world, the number of volunteers is very large, because programming unlike road construction is an art-form, Linus Torvalds said: "I hold open source people to higher standards. They are supposed to be the people who do programming because it's an art-form, not because it's their job.", quoted from "Programming is Fun" section of "Why Software Should Be Free" by Richard Stallman: "It was generally understood that people frequently loved programming enough to break up their marriages". quoted from "The Tao Of Programming" by Geoffrey James. "Thus spake the master programmer: ``After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless.''". by the way, a book by Linus Torvalds (co-written with David Diamond the journalist) was titled "Just for Fun" (ISBN: 0-06-662072-4). To all of them "I program, therefore I am." and "To be is to program."

Those projects recive rewards from companies, governments and users in less obstructive fashion than proprietary software "if you like it, and you want it to developed more, then send us donations". Non-profitable organizations are formed to own the copyrights and intellectual properties, to provide logistical, legal, and financial support for to free software projects, for example Free Software Foundation (FSF) was formed to support GNU project, Python Software Foundation (PSF) to support Python project, Mozilla Foundation to support Mozilla Project, and Software in the Public Interest (SPI) supports Debian.

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For better trust and independence Debian even though it's a non-profitable organization it does not accept donations nor hold any money! another organization called Software in the Public Interest (SPI) do that and supervise it's usage independently for Debian, SPI holds property in trust for Debian, as stated by Debian Constitution: "SPI and Debian are separate organisations who share some goals. (...) Debian Developers are currently members of SPI by virtue of their status as Developers (...) SPI has no authority regarding Debian's technical or nontechnical decisions, except that no decision by Debian with respect to any property held by SPI shall require SPI to act outside its legal authority, (...) Debian claims no authority over SPI other than that over the use of certain of SPI's property (...) Debian Developers are not agents or employees of SPI (...)".

1.1.6. Analogy.

To make the idea of open source more clear, let make some figurative analogy, if software is like food, the closed source proprietary software is just like junk food with secrit recipe, they are proude of having secrit recipe this is not as good as it may seem to you, how do you know if it's good to your health ? how much salt, sugar and fat it contains and what type of colors and flavor it uses, is it natural or casing cancer ? you are not allowed to now those things because the recipe is an "intellectual property", all you have to do is to take the risk of believing what is written on the package (if any), imagine if there is an EULA written on the package says "by opening the package you agree the following terms" one of those "the only permitted usuage is eating, you are not allowed to analyze, decompose or test it", numbers written on the package could be fake for many reasons (for example they could lie about calories to gain more girls on diet), even more the government is not allowed to test if it's safe to be eaten by humans, on the other hand we have recipes from our folklore everybody knows how to make them they are standard open source recipes, let's assume that restaurant X make a new recipe named after it "X" and publish it (on the door,TV show or web site), Y is another restaurant that take some courses from X and also able to serve this item, you could be X from it's inventor X or from a cheaper restaurant like Y or if you don't have much money (or just for fun), you could make it your self, X makes money from both selling this item and making courses, Y makes money by selling the same item, every body wins, you could replace sugar with something for diet yourself or pay any one like X or Y to do that.

Another famous analogy from "Sair Linux and GNU Certification" books and 'fortune-mod' that computer operating systems are analogous to airlines, (adapted combined version of the joke):

1.1.7. Paradox and philosophy.

The idea of Free Software (no one should own the software, software is just ideas, no one should restrict using, copying, developing, thinking,...etc) appeared by efforts of Richard Stallman on his GNU project (he had started with GNU EMACS in 1986), the idea is there even before that for example the ITS network which collapsed on 1982, Mr. Stallman thought of an idea to prevent collapsing of other or future sharing societies so he come up with the philosophy of Free Software by founding the Free Software Foundation (FSF). As any new ideology it has enemies because of interests conflect, they say "Software communists should go to USSR!", Mr. Stallman (he is an American, his ideas appeard in critical time - the cold war) replied that free software is not about compulsory sharing of software, it's all about the freedom to share, it's to allow people who wants to help other people, while in Communism we have compulsory sharing or compulsory control of people ideas, now consider what FSF enemies like Software Publishers Association (SPA) have been doing, for example they:

Between 2004 and 2005, SPA published many newspaper articles in my country, they make them appear as news (I don't know if they pay or they had just fool all those newspaper reporters) where SPA bless our effort to stop "piracy", more over SPA was introduced as a charity organization not as an association of commercial companies, in those articles they claim that open source (they avoid using the term 'free') voluntary efforts are distructive and obstructing investment in IT sector (do they want the government to arrest volunteers?), meanwhile commercial software (they mean proprietary software) is the only way for my poor country to develop (completely the opposite of what the UNDP has said)!! If this is true, why 'The Takeda Award for Social/Economic Well-Being (2001)' was given to Richard Stallman (the founder of GNU) and Linus Torvalds (the developer of Linux) shared with Ken Sakamura ? why Richard Stallman was rewarded with four Honorary doctorates (from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology in 1996, University of Glasgow in 2001, Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2003, and Universidad Nacional de Salta in 2004) and a Honorary professorship from the Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria del Peru in 2004 ? was the Time Magazine wrong when they placed Linus Torvalds number 17 on 'Person of the Century Poll' (2000) ? or do the search for the 100 Greatest Finns of all time (2004) where they placed him 16th ?

Software owners use smear words such as "piracy" and "theft", as well as expert terminology such as "intellectual property" and "damage", to suggest a certain line of thinking to the public--a simplistic analogy between programs and physical objects, unlike physical objects when you give software to others (by copying) you don't lose it, it cost nothing, meanwhile copying physical objects is not yet invented (and will not be) it needs raw materials which has a cost, maybe cost more because of initial costs and mass production savings. "intellectual property" is a self-contradicting term (like "black light" and "good evil") which mean ownership over ideas, but ownership is for deliverable bounded physical materials. Software copying does not harm nor affect the company capital and the owner's big fortune by any mean, owners exaggeration of "economic loss" is based on the assumption that each and every one would have bought a copy (having the desire and the money to buy), it's in worst cases "a loss of possible customers".

Owners threaten us with the law, as if today's law reflects an unquestionable view of morality, Mr. Stallman replies with "It's elemental that laws don't decide right and wrong. Every American should know that, forty years ago (ie. 1950s), it was against the law in many states for a black person to sit in the front of a bus; but only racists would say sitting there was wrong." although you had better obey the law and just copy or modify free software only.

Proprietary software publishers introduce themselves as "commercial" software makers ("commercial" software vs. "open source" software) but it's quite important to know that free software movment is not about the price! it's not about charitable software making, as quoted from "The Free Software Definition" (www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) "``Free software'' does not mean ``non-commercial''. A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important.", for example, the Linux market is among the fastest growing with more than 30 billion USD (refere to www.techweb.com/wire/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=55800522). Proprietary software publishers claims that free software programmers are amateurs or unemployed programmers searching for a career in proprietary software company but the quality of free software tells different story. In the world of proprietary software, programmers are not well educated because all codes they had seen are "Hello, world!" and sorting loops. While in a free software world, programmers are educated better because they had seen source code of real programs, companies that want a program, they hire any programmers they like (including the original programmer) to adapt an existing software, the adapted program is then publicly available to the rest of us, it will cost less and the software is more usable by more people.

The last word to say is that having the source code available allow any one to take part in checking it from bugs, and thus fixing it, due Linus's law (by Eric S. Raymond) "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". While with EULAs of proprietary software all what you are allowed to do is to accept bugs as your "destiny", recall Y2K problem, owners before 1990 never told us about it, they even did not allow us to detect it (no source, no reverse engineering) and they did not allow us to fix by hiring programmers other than those buggers who create the problem in the first place, provided that they admit it, they disclaim any warranty even for bugs put on purpose, all you are allowed to do is to accept bugs or pay the same buggers what ever they want to remove bugs.

1.1.8. Intellectual properties and Islam.

{وَمَا كَانَ هَذَا القُرءَانُ أَن يُفتَرَى مِن دُونِ اللَّه وَلَكِن تَصدِيقَ الَّذِي بَينَ يَدَيهِ وَتَفصِيلَ الكِتَابِ لا رَيبَ فِيهِ مِن رَّبِّ العَالَمِينَ}
meaning translation: { And this Quran is not such as could ever be produced by other than Allah (Lord of the heavens and the earth), but it is as confirmation of (the revelation) which was before it [ie. the Torah and the Gospel], and a full explanation of the Book (ie. laws, decreed for Mankind)-- wherein there is nodoubt-- from the Lord of the `Alamin (Mankind, Jinn and all that exists).} (Quran, V10:37)

In many countries, Islam is considered (even in non-Islamic countries) as a source of moralities and offer guidelines of law making, so I wrote this to discuss free software from our point of view, but keep in mind that this is NOT a formal Islamic point of view 'Fatwa', you should refere to Islamic law specialists, this is just a trial to remove fog of SPA's propaganda so that those specialists could do their job independently with no bad influence. Here we do not discuss current state of laws and agreements, we are talking about the principle, is there a real reason to move away from the solid fact that "Islam forbids obstructing any type of knowledge and it also forbids monopolism." ?

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Unfortunately Islam is partially applyed nowadays, you should notice that Islamic countries are where "Muslims" live not where Islam is practiced, and I'm not talking about Islam the religion I'm talking about Islamic laws and life style where non-Muslim citizens are proud to be part of the Islamic civilization. Islam does not force any one to be a Muslim.

{ إِنَّ الَّذِينَ يَكْتُمُونَ مَآ أَنزَلْنَا مِنَ الْبَيِّنَاتِ وَالْهُدَى مِن بَعْدِ مَا بَيَّنَّاهُ لِلنَّاسِ فِي الْكِتَابِ أُوْلئِكَ يَلْعَنُهُمُ اللَّهُ وَيَلْعَنُهُمُ الَّلاعِنُونَ }
meaning translation: { Verily, those who conceal the clear proofs, evidences and the guidance, which We have sent down, after We have made it clear for the people in the Book, they are the ones cursed by Allah and cursed by cursers.} (Quran, V2:159)
{ إِنَّ الَّذِينَ يَكْتُمُونَ مَآ أَنزَلَ اللَّهُ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَيَشْتَرُونَ بِهِ ثَمَناً قَلِيلاً أُوْلَئِكَ مَا يَأكُلُونَ فِي بُطُونِهِمْ إلا الَّنارَ ولا يُكَلِّمُهُمُ اللَّهُ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ وَلايُزَكِّيِهِمْ وَلَهُمْ عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌ }
meaning translation: { Verily, those who conceal what Allah has sent down the Book, and purchase a small gain there with (of worldly things), they eat into their bellies nothing but fire. Allah will not speak to them on the Day of Resurrection, not purify them, and theirs will be a painful torment.} (Quran, V2:174)
from those Ayat, we see how bad and evil, it's to conceal that knowledge, while they are taken from a context concerning specific relegous topic, the following prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) saying is generalized and applies to all kinds of knowledge: "Who conceal (obstruct,block or deny) any type of knowledge (or science) will be bridle with a bridle of fire on the Day of Resurrection." (6517 Sahih Al-Jame', translated by me). So Islam forbiddes obstructing knowledge, evidences on exceptions are concering bad or useless knowledge (eg. knowledge used to make weapons) but there are no exceptions related to a gain for interests of the few (eg. software publishers).

{(...) وَتَعَاوَنُواْ عَلَى البِرِّ والتَّقَوى، وَلا تَعَاوَنُواْ عَلَى الإِثمِ وَالعُدوَانِ، وَاتَّقُواْ اللَّهَ، إِنَّ اللَّهَ شَدِِيدُ الْعِقَابِ}
meaning translation: {(...) help you one another in Al-Birr and Al-Taqwa (virtue, righteousness and piety); but do not help one another in sin and transgression. And fear Allah . Verily, Allah is Severe in punishment.} (Quran, V5:2)
Whereas copyrights and EULAs are not only a restriction of people freedom to use what they payed for, but also they explicitly prohibit people from helping other people with what they have payed for (they are not owners, they have a license), sharing knowledge or software according to them are forbidden, for example with some book copyrights you are not allowed to take notes about any part of it to pass it to your friend "no part of this book maybe copyed,... or summarized by any mean" and may be they prohibit telling him what you have learned (as in non disclosure agreement). In short "intellectual property" is to give interests of the few (owners) impotance over interests of the many. "no part of this book maybe (...) stored in a retreival system in any form or by any mean" If they go a bit farther they will prohibit us from thinking in or memorizing (as a mean of storing them) the owned information (just an exaggeration). Copyrights are damaging our social cohesion, you may not give CDs to your friend even if you are sure he will not copy them.

Protecting mind sanity is one of the five objectives of Islam (eg. that's why alcohol is forbidden). Because of all that copying rights were premited to everyone on the condition that they admit the favor of the original author and not to modify it with stating so, teachers had better find something else for living and teach just for the sake of God, because it was forbidden to take money from students, the government was supposed to support both teachers and students by managing 'Waqf' money dedicated for this objective. Waqf is is sustainable way charity (could be translated as money on hold). When an owner decide, for God sake, to put something (any type of money) as Waqf, the government hold it's resources (eg. land) from being consumed (by an individual, a group or a generation) so it's preserved forever, and give it's profits (eg. it's crop) for charity (eg. feeding the poor) without consuming it's resources. Examples of Waqf money: copies of books for public libraries where they are put by volunteers on condition that the library may not sell them but allow people to read (or copy) them. For ages Waqf money was an importent way to provide support for schools, universites,books and researches in Islamic world, in some periods the author of any newly written or translated book was payed the weight of the book in gold! Charitable Waqf is not the only type of Waqf, for example, there are some Islamic books put on "Waqf for preservers by heart", which mean that hard copies of such books could only be owned by who preserve it by heart and it may not be copied, sold or passed over to someone who do not. In Islamic world nowadays, we have many books and software for "charitable publishing", "copyrighted to all Muslims" or "the right to copy is pemited to every Muslim", but this is now just an individual effort, there are no appendices list the full terms of license, and sometimes there is a note in the next page by the publisher that contradicts all that.

Our way of thinking has changed from that time, taking money from students is no more forbidden (because teachers have nothing else for living and governments no loner interested in managing Waqf money for that purpose), we have considered copyrights as an exception for many reasons, ranging from emotional lesser importent reasons (like not to be "freezed"), to more importent reasons like it's necessary to have scientist back, or to prevent "economic loss" that software publishers have told us about, they ask for the right to obstruct information from the public for the public own good! We have discussed how this is no more true, we now have free software (eg. GNU which is supported by FSF and UNISCO), and now free software makers facing many problems because of patents on algorithms and hardware specifications. Govenments and companies loses money and time reinventing the wheel casing the real economic loss! we should have reconsider the exception we made and move back to the original rule.

Ownership in Islam is for deliverable bounded materials that does not conflect with common interest of the public, for example no one could claim ownership over a signle atom (non deliverable), a cloud in the sky(non bounded), someone's soul (not deliverable nor bounded nor a material), or a river or a road crossing public lands (conflect with common interest of the public), so we have conservations on "intellectual property" concept. You could sell meterial goods that you own or offer a service, but what we call selling the permission to a second party so he could use the product only as specified by the agreement like EULA of most proprietary software ? in this case you (the one who pay and "buy") do NOT own the CDs as they are with what they contain in a format in which they are usable and deliverable and having the freedom to do what ever you like with them (copying, renting, giving,...etc) nor they sell you the software (non deliverable) nor they offer the service (if they did then they won't bother copying since it will increase the demand on it), what they do is more like renting CDs (they give you CDs and tell you it's ours but you could use it according to the agreement) but this agreement lakes many basics of Islamic legal renting agreements, for example the fee is absolute payed once (no time is specified) and the fee of renting is much more expensive than the product it self (CD copying fee is less than 1 USD, but most EULAs are more than 50 USD), and even if we agreed the term of "Intellectual properties" so that they are not talking about ownership of CDs but ownership of the software itself in form of ideas in any medium contains it (even if the medium is a property of others) so they sell CDs and rent the software on it, this mean that they rent the same thing for more than one client!

According to Islamic laws it's illegal to sell things that are not usable from the client point of view, "peice of junk selling" is when a usual home user (not a junk or recycling agent this is another case) want to buy a used second hand TV set, he asks "does it work ?" the salesman may NOT reply "take it AS IS, no testing is allowed, you may not remove the cover, I'm selling you a peice of junk" in a price of working used TV set, to make it legal he should reply with "yes, you could test it in my shop." , "no, it has so and so defects" or "I don't know, get someone to test it in my shop", that type of selling is just like selling software with no source code to test it or develop it, selling is transforming of ownership where the buyer becomes free to do what ever he wants to do with what he payed for, "black box" or the "Joha's nail" ways of selling are illegal (Joha is a funny character from folklore who fools someone by selling him all of the house of Joha's late father except a nail in the external wall according to his father's will that he has to look after this nail, he tied animals like camels to that nail which is still his property and use it as an excuse to force the client to leave the house for Joha), one may not sell things with exceptions or with restriction on how it would be used, for exmple to say "you may not remove the cover" or "you may not operate it after mid night" this is just like prohibition of reverse engineering, or to say "you may fix it only on XYZ shops" this is just like obstructing the source code so only the original owner could develop or fix it, tranforming owner ship with selling imply providing the source.

It's illegal to sell things that are not usable alone or things that could not be delivered (selling fishes in the sea, selling wheat seed by seed, selling a car withno key or selling each alone the car with 200 USD and the key with 20,000 USD) this is like selling hardware withno software(OS) that make it usable or like selling a printer withno driver or with a binary only driver (source is needed when the vendor become broken or stop developing this line while there are many new software that is not compatible with the old binary only driver), take this example, one bought SM56 Modem that is bundled with a binary only driver for OSs at that time including MS Windows 98 what he uses, later on he bought a web camera that is bundled with a binary only driver for WinME or more recent OSs from Microsoft (not including Win98), but producing and supporting his Modem had been stopped and no driver for WinMe, and even if we assume that he can afford buying both Win98 and WinME licenses he will not be able to use it for the puspore he payed money for (sending his video through the web).

To summaries all this with a formal statement that this or that is illegal we need specialist to consider it again far from SPA influence and keep in mind public interests is not the same as owner's or publisher's interests.

1.1.9. Conclusion.

You may become confused do we want "intellectual property" or not? to state it clear we want no intellectual property and no owners of copyrights as regards software! this is the long term objective FSF. But it's not about denying the favor of the first author nor removing their names from credits, it's to admit real authors but being free to use,copy,develop,... the intellectual product. To be pragmatic we use and obey intellectual property laws, we get copyrights for our software but in away that distroy it in the long term, we license our software under terms of reversed content license to force it free "By contrast (of other licenses), this license is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software", We do NOT want patents on software ideas or algorithms.

1.1. Copyrights and Intellectual Property.

Section quotes:

Section contents:

1.1.1. Human resources and innovation.

1.1.2. Intellectual properties and copyrights.

1.1.3. Does intellectual properties encourage innovations ?

1.1.4. The other choice.

1.1.5. Independent software support industry.

1.1.6. Analogy.

1.1.7. Paradox and philosophy.

1.1.8. Intellectual properties and Islam.

1.1.9. Conclusion.