Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: Mechanical license
Author: Brett Glass Posted: 8/26/2000; 8:11:50 AM Topic: A softer GPL? Msg #: 20312 (In response to 20308) Prev/Next: 20311 / 20313
Is this the case for anybody who publishes a song? I'm not a member of any music industry trade groups or organizations, and have no relationship with the Harry Fox Agency; why would you talk to them instead of me if you wanted to record a version of a song I wrote?Because the licensing is compulsory. You do get the money, but you do not have a choice as to whether or not the license is granted. (Most musicians are friendly about this, though. When approached for a mechanical license, the overwhelming majority will grant it gladly because it eliminates middlemen.) The Harry Fox Agency is in the business of setting up mechanical licenses.
If you're interested in the details of how mechanical licenses work, I recommend that you buy the book "This Business of Music," available via your favorite bookseller. It's an indispensable reference for any professional musician.
Basically, Brett, you're trying to assume privileges that you haven't been granted. (The right to modify some code and then treat the entire combined work as your own.)
Not so. Programmers should not (and do not!) have the right to misrepresent authorship of code. (The right of origination is an inalienable right under the Berne Convention.) However, if the code is given to all end users to use in the way that benefits them the most, at no cost, it is unethical to prevent programmers from doing that also. To discriminate against programmers in this way is malicious and unethical. It undermines their work, destroys their markets, hurts progress, and deters standardization. The GPL does it due to Richard Stallman's spiteful vendetta against commercial programmers. As Dave Winer points out elsewhere on this site, the "preamble" to the GPL, and Stallman's other writings, show appalling disrespect for the profession of programing.
And FYI, you certainly can take GPL'd software commercial. NeXT sold their NEXTSTEP Developer package for $800 per seat, and it was all built around NeXT's modified version of the GNU C Compiler.
This did not constitute "taking GPL'd software commercial." NeXT's version of GCC was not (and could not be) commercial; NeXT did not own the intellectual property rights to it and therefore could not license it for money. The fact that a copy of it was included in the same package with a commercial product did not make the compiler commercial.
--Brett Glass
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