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Originally Posted by gberardi  When you mentioned that copyrights do not protect ideas, I wondered about the existence of patents which basically gives protection to ideas, especially patents based on math and software. While patents are supposed to protect actual inventions, patents on things like the human genome or exclusive OR statements aren't exactly the kinds of things that people can create alternative inventions for. |
Software patents are an aberration and will most likely be struck down in the near future. They are already not legal in the EU and it's just a matter of time before the US Supreme Court strikes them down.
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Originally Posted by gberardi As for freedom of choice in licensing, has anyone removed this freedom? I know I've been involved in arguments in which some people complain about the GPL because it forces them to comply to the terms of the license. |
I agree that the GPL in itself is just a choice, but there are people out there who think that
all software should be licensed under the GPL, and that's where most arguments arise. However, it's worth noting that (ironically) the GPL is a very restrictive license. Only the MIT/BSD/ZLIB licenses are truly
free licenses because they allow people to use the code in any way they want (while still having the author retain copyright). I'm planning on releasing some code in the future, and I'll be using one of those licenses. I very much dislike the GPL/LGPL due to the way it restricts people's freedom in the way they can use the code, and/or inconveniences them.