I am always fascinated when I find a perfect example of a political principle in some other field. For example, P.J. O'Rourke wrote a very amusing essay once on how G-d is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. I don't find them often, but from time to time I find something that perfectly illustrates a political point. In this case, the area of copyrights.

Now, I am quite unhappy with the present state of copyright and patent law, and agree that there is a need for some significant reform, but that is not my topic. (For those interested, I found some interesting writing on software patent reform. I don't entirely agree with the author, but it is an interesting piece.)

No, what I find fascinating is the copyright war that has been raging for the last decade among the members of the free software community.

For those who aren't computer programming geeks (a group to which I belong off and on), I will give you a brief summary.

Free software is, as the name suggests, software that is offered free of charge. Some also argue that to be "free" the author or distributor must also provide the original source code. So, just to avoid any conflict over trivialities, I will define "free" as code which is provided free of charge and with the source code included or available upon request.

Among those who write free software, there are two differing types of copyright schemes, the Berkley copyright and the GPL . There are a lot of slight variations on both, and a few other minor schemes, but 99% of free software copyrights can be described as either variants of the Berkley copyright or variants of the GPL. So, let me explain those two schemes.

The GPL (Gnu Public License) copyright was developed by the Free Software Foundation. As this group believes that computer code should not be copyrighted and should be freely available, they incorporated this into their copyright. The copyright has two basic features. First, that anyone distributing a program developed from or using GPL code must provide the source code as well. Second, any program developed from or using GPL software must itself by copyrighted using the GPL. Critics (and even some supporters) often call this a "viral" license, as once any GPL code has been used, any subsequent products must also be licensed using GPL.

The Berkley license was developed to facilitate the distribution of the Berkley version of Unix (the predecessor of all those Unix version ending in "BSD"). The terms are pretty simple. Any code developed using Berkley licensed software must contain the same copyright attribution (eg. "Copyright 1980 by the Regents of Univ. of California"), and that's it. Derivative products can be licensed using the Berkley copyright, the GPL, a restrictive commercial copyright, anything. There are absolutely no restrictions  on the terms under which the software can be used except that proper credit must be given to the original author.*

So, those are the two copyright schemes, and the conflict between those who use one and those who use the other has been raging in the geek world for a long time. At the moment, the GPL seems to be winning out, as its adherents are more fanatical and doctrinaire (think Obamania and you get the right idea). They also have the advantage of having converted a few developers of quite popular software (sort of "celebrity support") and have won over a few large corporations that are involved in the free software movement.

So, how does this relate to politics?

Well, the two copyright schemes appear to me to be perfect analogies to the liberal and conservative world views. The GPL is based on a dogma, the idea that copyright must be eliminated, and it takes all kinds of steps to ensure that no one can ever use a copyright if touching that code. The Berkley license, on the other hand, simply offers code for free and leaves it to the recipient to decide how to use it.

In short, GPL is liberal, claiming to know what is "right" and forcing everyone to go along. Berkley is conservative, saying "I am offering this code for free, do with it what you will", and trusting the recipient knows what he wants to do with it.

I know the GPL supporters** will disagree with this, as many consider themselves "libertarians", but they truly are not. By claiming to know better than others what should be done, by writing copyright so as to force everyone to subscribe to their view of right and wrong, and generally by adopting an arrogant attitude that, but for their benevolent actions, the world would continue along its benighted course to doom, they show all the attitudes responsible for liberal policies.

As I have said before, liberalism is, at the most basic level, an expression of arrogance. And I think this GPL v. Berkley conflict shows yet another face of the same conflict. Some are willing to trust their fellows to do right, some want to force their ideas on everyone else. That is the line which divides conservatives from liberals.

----------------------------------------------------

* There is one modification that has arisen recently. In the case of BSD, as the code developed over several decades the list of attributions grew to such a point that the first five or six screens shown while loading some versions of Unix were all attributions. As the attribution requirement could obviously lead to absurd results over time, some versions of the Berkley license require only that attribution be made in code or documentation, not necessarily on screen. It doesn't really change the issues about which I am writing, but I thought I should recognize this development.

** For the record, in my free time, at least what is left over when I am done with work, family, blogging and fiction, I do write software for fun. At the moment I am toying with a compiler for a new language derived from forth, but with a much smaller memory footprint and a reduced command set. Anyway, when and if that software is finished, I plan to release it under the Berkley license. Also, what development I have done for existing projects was done for the FreeBSD project (though never included in the distribution as they placed a lower priority on ATA-2 compliance than other issues), so I obviously support the Berkley side in this dispute. Just to reveal any biases I may have had before writing this essay.