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Re:Miguel de Icaza responds to latest RMS article by andreyf on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @11:39AM (#864387)
That freedom stops as soon as you share it with someone else. While you can do whatever you want with your creations, those you share it with can also do whatever they want with your creations.

These fundamental freedoms can impede progress, and so the US constitution allows congress to enforce limited-time monopolies for authors on their intellectual creations. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause

Re:Miguel de Icaza responds to latest RMS article by davidw on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @11:47AM (#864412)
It's a compromise intended to stimulate the provisioning of public goods, to borrow some terms from economics, by creating artificial scarcity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Possible_solutions