.comment: Leave the Front Door Unlocked, Too

By: Dennis E. Powell
Wednesday, August 1, 2001 02:53:44 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3668/1/

An Interesting Week if Property Matters

They say you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. I wanted to know what I had, so I got rid of everything. -- Steven Wright

Last week was an interesting one for those to whom the idea of property matters.

First, there was the New England family who returned home from a trip to discover a man and woman had moved into their home, had sold some of its contents, and had used the money to buy paint and other supplies to give the house a makeover. The couple later explained to the police that they did not believe in the idea of personal property. This really happened.

Then came the news of the DSL. Those letters have already sparked considerable noise in the computing world, standing for "digital subscriber line," a heavily-advertised broadband connection that you can get as soon as they develop it, if you happen to live in the actual telephone company building itself, in which case it is guaranteed, though not in writing, to work "sometimes."

But this was a new use of the letters DSL. This one is the Design Science License dreamt up in -- where else? -- San Francisco. The difference between it and the old variety of DSL is that the old one ought to work, at least in theory.

DSL is a plan for progressive redistribution of talent, and as schemes for the progressive redistribution of wealth are backed chiefly by those who have none, the DSL is bound to be a big favorite with the talentless.

It is written in quasi-legalistic, feel-good gibberish, to wit:

"Whereas 'design science' is a strategy for the development of artifacts as a way to reform the environment (not people) and subsequently improve the universal standard of living, this Design Science License was written and deployed as a strategy for promoting the progress of science and art through reform of the environment."

Sounds like a proposal for biodegradable toilet paper with nice patterns printed on it, doesn't it? (It goes on to say that the covered works may be freely altered, which underlines this impression.) But instead, it is supposed to apply to the writings and artwork of those who attach it to their work, which in most cases is neither biodegradable nor festooned with nice patterns.

In fact, the sentence quoted above means absolutely nothing except that its author, Michael Stutz, wants you to know that he's a very important fellow wannabe who knows more than you do. Beyond that nonsense sentence, the words "design science," "environment," and "artifact" appear nowhere else in the document, except for "design science" in its title. Indeed, one suspects and hopes that it is the tipoff to a fairly imaginative joke, but fears that it was cranked out by someone who thought he was writing Great Words.

A Squeezably Soft-Headed Idea

The reason it's trotted out so often is that it just about always works: Convince the majority that it wants something which is owned by the minority, then convince them that they are entitled to it. A few years ago The New York Daily News commissioned a poll, the finding of which was that 53 percent of New Yorkers believed that the rich should be taxed more heavily. This datum is useful only in that it showed that at least 53 percent of New Yorkers don't think of themselves as rich. (Bill Gates's father, who has sponsored newspaper ads in favor of higher taxes, does not live in New York.)

The fact is, people work for a living, or ought to. Even the people who write the Linux kernel and the various packages that make it into a full-featured operating system. That's why you see all those company names on their email addresses.

The so-called "free" licenses, supposedly good intentions notwithstanding, do nearly everything possible to confound this economic fact, totally at the expense of those who do the work. That's why you've been seeing more and more names with free software company email addresses drop out of the process entirely, as they are laid off, or enter the reverse of the underground economy: disappear inside companies where they can develop proprietary stuff for the companies themselves, never to be seen or used by anyone else.

But even if you are among those who still believe that a "free" software license contains some loophole whereby people can actually earn a survival living, you can scarcely endorse the idea of the DSL.

Stutz proposes that works ought to be created and then turned loose with very few restrictions as to what may be done with them. You may copy them, put them on the web, change them (such as, say, inserting "not" before every verb, or putting the faces in photographs on, say, naked bodies) so long as you specify the parts the original creator provided and make the original work available, by URL or something. And your derivative must be published with the same conditions.

Let me explain what this means: Let us say that you are a writer, a real idiot savant, capable of writing a book and getting it published but so dimwitted as to be talked into the DSL. Your book can be changed entirely as to meaning, updated, altered in any way imaginable, so long as it's retitled sufficiently to distinguish it from the original, and you have nothing to say about it, nor if money is made from it are you entitled to any.

The fundamental notion behind "free" licenses is that all new thoughts are like scientific advances, and that no one "owns" the speed of light. Scientific advances, it is reasoned, are built atop other scientific advances. We'd be in a hell of a mess if everyone had to invent his or her own wheel.

And with basic science, that's true enough. And that's why virtually all basic science that's being done is subsidized by some great institution or foundation. Otherwise, you'd get home and find a subatomic physicist repainting the living room with the proceeds from grandma's ottoman.

But does it work in other fields? Is software coding, for instance, science, or is it art? It certainly exhibits characteristics of both. It fits within a specified set of rules or it won't run, but if it were the mere entering of code, there would be no difference between good coders and bad ones, good software and bad, would there? Yet, given the set of rules, it is possible and often desirable for software to be a community project. (Even so, look at the mailing list of any substantial project, and you'll learn that the community is a contentious one.) The science metaphor continues, to the credit of licenses such as the GPL, when someone is able to take an existing body of code and write a front end for, say, KDE.

(The problem with licenses such as the GPL is that they attempt to broadly formalize what ought to be narrow and informal. Newton's work managed to enter physics without the help of a trick license.)

Enter now art in all its many forms (or environmental artifacts or design science, or whatever they call it in the pastel regions -- the sentence I quoted, on which the purpose of the DSL hinges, doesn't make this or anything else clear).

Have you ever seen a piece of art or a book created by a community? It's graffiti, in the case of the former, and unreadable, in the case of the latter (the lone exception being a paradoy potboiler sex novel, "Naked Came the Stranger," written by a couple dozen Newsday writers as a stunt, and published in 1969 under the pen name "Penelope Ash"). Yet Stutz proposes that writers and artists publish their work under his potty little version of the GPL.

Let's take it for a spin. Let's grab a paragraph or two from the DSL (which, interestingly, is not copyright under the DSL -- makes you wonder, doesn't it?) and fork them up:

7. WARRANTY.

THE WORK COMES WITH ABSOLUTE WARRANTY, EXPRESS AND IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

8. CLAIMER OF LIABILITY.

IN EVERY EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT,

INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES

(INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR

SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)

HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT,

STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING

IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS WORK, ESPECIALLY IF ADVISED OF THE

POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

And in keeping with the requirements of the license, I must specify my changes and credit the original author, as well as specify where his work can be found.

I deleted "NO," " IS PROVIDED 'AS IS,' AND," "LY NO," "DIS," "NO," "OR," and "EVEN IF," and added "ABSOLUTE," "AND" and "ESPECIALLY." The remainder is contributed by Michael Stutz. The original text is available at http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-07-26-001-20-PS.

Yes. That certainly works well, doesn't it? And I could call it Dennis's Silly License and put it out there as the DSL, were the DSL published under itself. Now imagine applying this method of alteration to a book! And specify the changes -- that would be a chapter everybody would read, wouldn't it.

But it would have to get a lot goofier than that to achieve the silliness quotent of the DSL.

He has published a book under his license; the book is available online, perhaps as proof that online is not a good way to read books. I suspect that pretty much anything else published under it ought to be printed, as his preamble suggests, on rolls suitable for use in a room where much reading is done -- "Hey! Where's Chapter Three?" "Sorry. I ate vegetarian last night and used it this morning." -- but it does raise an amusing point: Anyone who wanted to could take his book, change a few words, add "The Much, Much Better" to his title, throw it up on a low-bandwidth website someplace for free, and publish it as a book for two bucks less than his version, and, if he were to take advantage of the low prices publishers contractually offer authors on returns, make sure he had gifts for all imaginable occasions for the rest of his life. Which he may well have anyway, if the book imparts the kind of thinking that its copyright does.

Reading Between the Perforations

If there is an underlying principle to the thing called "justice," it is that everyone is entitled to -- and must receive -- the fruits of his or her labors. This applies to both sides of the equation: if one has gone into the criminal line of work, the payment is jail, or a fine, or, metaphorically, the rope. This is not a new idea.

And if one produces something, that person is entitled to the proceeds.

This has become more complicated as the world has. For instance, in a very big project such as the production of automobiles or computers, a lot of people are involved. Some do the creative work. Some do the assembly. Some -- and this is too frequently overlooked -- put up the money to get the whole thing running and to pay the others until the enterprise becomes self-sustaining, and thereby take a risk in that the enterprise may never achieve that goal, and so are rewarded in dividends if it does. But still it follows: you're paid for what you do, what you provide.

If you are the sole producer of a thing -- a book manuscript, a piece of software, a really nifty bottle opener -- you additionally get to name its price. If the price is too high, nobody will buy your product. If it's too low, a lot of people will buy it but you won't realize the value of your contribution, and if you're smart you'll raise your price. You may also, if you like, give away your work. You may ask that people send you a postcard from the place they live, or photographs of themselves, or menus from local restaurants -- doesn't matter. It's up to you. This is freedom, and it includes the freedom to fail (if your product is no good or your price is too high). This freedom is enjoyed, really, by enterprises of all sizes.

What's more, your creation is covered by laws protecting what is called "intellectual property." This serves the practical and just purpose of helping to assure that even if your product is as intangible as 200,000 words in a particular order -- a book -- or a unique arrangement of zeroes and ones -- a software program -- or a piece of metal bent just so -- that cool cap lifter -- it is yours just as surely as if it were a house that you built and moved into. People are not allowed to decide that they will to move into your house; they are not allowed, either, to take over your manuscript, program, or bottle opener (or the design of your car, if you have that kind of great big enterprise).

This is all pretty basic stuff. Pretty obvious. But now a new agenda has arrived, and its purpose is to obscure these things. It holds that your ideas are not your own; your intellectual work belongs to anyone who would like to use it, just as that misguided couple of Vermonters believed that they were entitled to whatever home they cared to live in. The battle between "justice" and "entitlement" is being fought on many fronts.

One of those is by pressure -- that there's somehow something wrong with you if you have the temerity to suppose that your creation belongs to you. You need not spend much time in the Linux world to find this trend at work. You need not travel far to find permutations of "freedom" not seen since the results of 1917 Russia. The problem is that this never works when it is codified. When you help someone beset by hard times, that is decency and compassion. When you are coerced into doing so, it is extortion. If you write something and give it away, that is you exercising your freedom over your creation. If you are pressured into doing so, it is not.

The pressure is real. Were you to visit the Free Software Foundation's site, you would find the assertion that software that does not meet its specification of "free" is somehow inferior. Again, as you travel the Linux circles, you'll find that many have bought uncritically into this notion, even though those who are not still supported by their parents would seldom think of giving away whatever it is they do for a living. (And spare me the nonsense about speech and beer -- the argument is wholly specious and fit only to be an artifact wiped away by rolls of Michael Stutz's designer science.)

So now we have this new phoney-baloney license to cover other stuff. There will be pressure to adopt it. The pressure will be brought by non-creators in hope of making a trend sufficient that some poor fools will buy into it in hope of gaining the approbation of the pierced-eyebrow set. Some probably will.

I still hold out the hope that the DSL is a hoax. It has all the earmarks -- the suggestion that it was two years in the making, for instance, which seems unlikely.

It is certainly a joke. What is unknown is whether it was an intentional one.