Re: [gentoo-user] CD ROM does not play audio CD's

[Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@metux.de>]

* Joerg Schilling <Joerg.Schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de> wrote:

> > I *like* the GPL because of that "You have all the freedom, exept to cut 
> > down this freedom"-attitude. It is like: I am a tolerant person, but not 
> > to intolerant people. And as another example: The german constitution 
> > also prohibits the change of the articles that guarantee human rights.
> 
> You seem to have a major missunderstanding with the background ot the 
> constitution. The constitution has not been written to save the constitution
> while ignoring possible harm to the people. The constitution does not give 
> asymmetric rights to parts of the whole population only.

Oh, it *does*. It reserves violential force to certain state instituions
only (eg. police, military). Special people are allowed carry around 
(and also use!) lethal weapons, while the "common man" is prohibited to
do so (in contrast to eg. the US constitution) - this is often called
the "monopoly of force", which the majority of politicians and lawyers
here see vital to form an state. At this point the German basic law
(which actually isn't a real constitution) is very asymetric at this point.

But: it stricly limits the power of the state as on the use of violence 
(eg. killing people who are not currently trying to kill others IS NOT
allowed, even if the current administration wants to do this!), splits
the power of the state into the three main (ideally independent) major
forces. In strong contrast, the EU does none of this (even allowing 
death penalty and using military force against demonstrators, just on
decision of the administration) - it is in neither way constitutional,
nor parlamentaric, nor democratic.

> The GPL however limits the usability of OpenSource as OSS and claims this
> is in order to save OSS. The GPL allows GPLd software to use any kind of 
> software but disallows other OpenSource Software to use GPLd software.

Right, that's what it has been built for. For good reasons. But nobody
is required to like this. It's a contract, not a law, so you're free
to go into the game or stay out. Same applies to all the other licenses.

> Another big problem with the GPL is that the Free Software Foundation does 
> not care about leality in own projects. There are at least two official FSF 
> projects that did ilegally change the license of the code they use from other 
> projects. libcdio did change code taken from cdrtools from GPLv2-only to 
> GPLv2-or-any-later and vcdimager publishes code under GPL that never has been 
> put under GPL by the author.

The pure existance of contracts doesn't imply that everyone complies 
with agreements he had made. That's what civil courts are for.
(btw: breaking licenses may also be criminal)

> > And if I wrote software, I would not want people to reuse the codeit in 
> > closed  source. So GPL is the right choice for me, because of the viral 
> > and supposed non-free issue.
> 
> If you like this, you do not need to forbid to use the software for other OSS
> as done by the GPL. 

The point is, the GPL requires everyone who uses derived work to be 
published under the same terms. Fine for some people, but not for 
others. But it's just a contract between the original authors and
those who want to derive work. You're not forced to do so, it's just
one option of many.

> > But remember, if more people contibute to a software project, then the 
> > license is some essential part of the collaboration. Changing it 
> > requires the consensus of *all* people who *ever* contributed to it.
> 
> You are obviously uninformed about legal facts. In Europe as well as in the 
> USA, "minor contributors" are not given the right to decide on this.

Any sources on that, at least for Germany ?
Ah, please forget EU directives, as long as they're not explicitly 
implemented in our law (passed both houses). The EU, according to
German base law and laws of nations has *NO* real legal power - 
it's almost completely based on constitutional violations (at least
for Germany, but most likely for the other member nations).


cu
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