zittrain left the cake out in the rain

[i slept through my alarm since 6 am on east coast is 3 am in cali and i cant get used to that, but i got to lecture 45 mins into it so here goes. zittrain is talking about software copyright]

Taxonomy of software ca. 2005

Public domain—theres no copyright claimed or claimable in it

Free --- open source initiative

and

“copyleft” – 95 years and as windows 95 is so conveniently named tho it came out in 1997 – that means that just around 2097 minus five years – we’ll be able to change and enliven windows 95 to the latter half of the 21^st software.

Proprietary – you get to eat the cake, put down the fork, and step away from the cake!

 Because open-source software has gained so much respect and credibitlity, proprietary companies have started “shared-source” where if you show them your driver’s license and talk to them, you can look at the recipe and make sure there’s no nutmeg in it, but you can’t add or take out any ingredients…..

 GNU’s not UNIX

The point of gnu is to get all the benefits of unix without all the hullabahoo

What’s wired into ppl at MIT to do---- look at this! Let’s send it out!

 “It’s Eureka!” Not “Eureka, where’s the lawyer!”

is GNU a copy? no, because it's like unix and it hasn't been COPIED from unix.....

this happens all the time -- you get programmers who fell off the turnip truck, make sure they are fresh and clean. you put pizza in one end and you get GNU coming out the end.

----copyleft: "the general public license"
if you release the cake, you must release the recipe

---if you bake a new kind of cake ... and if YOU make a BETTER recipe, you have to send your NEW recipe along as well.

zittrain: red hat will charge you $50 --- for what?

jesse stone (?) [harvard it guy]: they charge us for patches and security updates.....

z: we don't need no stinkin' patches!!!!!!!!!!  (that's from the "treasure of sierra monte." oh, it's too early.)  we don't need them. we only NEED them because our IT guys are afraid to stray past the Patch Zone.

[at this time, a discussion ensues between lessig, fisher and zittrain about GPL and derivative works which is way too complicated to blog --- prof. fisher: if i make a piggy bank made to look like uncle sam and sell it, and zittrain makes a copy of my piggy bank. do i have a case against him? before i can, i have to establish that my piggy bank is copywritten because it's a derivative work from the image of uncle sam in the public domain instead of just a copy. so what is derivative and what is a copy? .....]

much open source stuff is like an amish barn raising!  proprietary software is like having your barn built by a professional company. if there's a problem with the barn, there's an 800 number you can call and they tell you they're sorry, and as you to wait until the next version of the barn comes out.

[discussion of sco vs. ibm]

the barn raising wouldn't be as fun if we all had a bunch of releases to sign and exchange before we could all jump into the work, even tho if this it's clear that a barn where kids are gonna play and it makes sense to put some safety checks into it.

 

Comments

[Beth]

Great job! You got a great photo of the barn!

I have a question - why do you put stickers on your laptop?

http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2005/06/laptop_sticker_.html