Fair points all.  nicely put, Craig.

On Friday, November 2, 2001, at 12:48  AM, Craig Latta wrote:

>
> 	The thing I always found odd about "free software" dogma was that very
> phrase. I would think that freedom of *people* is what's important, not
> of software. The word "free", when applied to artifacts, just seems to
> be too strongly associated with price and the artifact itself to be a
> useful cue for any sort of human liberty. I think "open source" was an
> improvement.
>
> 	I think the FSF's notion of transitively preserving recipients' rights
> to create derived works is compelling, but words like "free" and
> "freedom" are too broad to describe it. They want to support a specific
> liberty, it seems. At the same time, calling the idea "viral" always
> sounds unconstructively derogatory to me.
>
> 	It'd be nice to orient the discussion toward the people involved, 
> or at
> least the activity in which they're engaged, rather than the artifacts
> they create. I always liked the term "copyleft" ("the right to copy is
> left"). It induces the audience, via a novel word, to consider the
> people to whom the right to copy is left, and why, instead of invoking a
> broad and familiar concept in an unfamiliar way. And it seems more
> evocative of the attributes its opponents don't like. :)
>
>
> -C
>
> --
> Craig Latta
> composer and computer scientist
> craig.latta at netjam.org
> www.netjam.org
> crl at watson.ibm.com
> Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]
>
>