

Project Harmony's Curiously Flat Tune - j_baker
http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Harmony-s-curiously-flat-tune-1283369.html

======
ggchappell
The first paragraph of this article annoys me.

> Although the concept of copyright is anathema to many free software
> advocates, ....

Only ignorant ones. (For those who don't get it: if you don't hold the
copyright on a work, then you can't license it, under the GPL or anything
else. Copyleft is firmly and inescapably founded on copyright.)

> Copyleft licences like the GPL subvert copyright to ensure source code is
> always made available, ....

I'm not sure how it can be considered _subversive_ to insist that the original
author's wishes, for how a work is licensed, are enforced by governments.

That said, the rest of the article has some worthwhile things to say.

> And unlike software licences, where there are some leading licences such as
> the GPL, LGPL, ASL and BSD, there are no leading agreements; companies and
> organisations have created their own documents to get contributors to hand
> over their rights, so to donate code meant parsing yet another document full
> of legalese.

An excellent point, one worth thinking about. This is especially urgent, now
that Harmony is around. Rather than simply criticizing it, it would be good to
offer an alternative (or to explain, clearly, how some existing idea
constitutes a better alternative).

