I love your comparison gpl and bsd licenses to different religions/philsophical ways of dealing with violence.
However, the game theoretic consequences of absolute non-violence (as in Jainism) are negative, unless non-violence is adhered to by everyone in the neighborhood. Or, I suppose you could say instead that non-violence is not a principle to be taken alone. In order to be effective and safe, you have to divest yourself of anything worth stealing, avoid creating interpersonal problems, and stay out of environments where you might be caught up in unrelated violence.
Since copyright has no meaning in isolated or pure environments like that, the analogy breaks down. Copyright is fundamentally a social and legal construct, not a philosophical one.
It's not quite accurate to draw the comparison with a 2-clause BSD license though. Relinquishing copyright and placing code into the public domain would be more pure. Authors licensing code under a 2-clause BSD license are threatening to sue if proper attribution is not kept. 3 and 4 clauses licenses add more promises to sue under some conditions.
However, the game theoretic consequences of absolute non-violence (as in Jainism) are negative, unless non-violence is adhered to by everyone in the neighborhood. Or, I suppose you could say instead that non-violence is not a principle to be taken alone. In order to be effective and safe, you have to divest yourself of anything worth stealing, avoid creating interpersonal problems, and stay out of environments where you might be caught up in unrelated violence.
Since copyright has no meaning in isolated or pure environments like that, the analogy breaks down. Copyright is fundamentally a social and legal construct, not a philosophical one.
It's not quite accurate to draw the comparison with a 2-clause BSD license though. Relinquishing copyright and placing code into the public domain would be more pure. Authors licensing code under a 2-clause BSD license are threatening to sue if proper attribution is not kept. 3 and 4 clauses licenses add more promises to sue under some conditions.