We could imagine a legal practice that was different --- briefs and

arguments that were kept secret; rulings that announced a result but not

the reasoning. Laws that were kept by the police but published to no one

else. Regulation that operated without explaining its rule.

We could imagine this society, but we could not imagine calling it

``free.''  Whether or not the incentives in such a society would be better

or more efficiently allocated, such a society could not be known as free.

The ideals of freedom, of life within a free society, demand more than

efficient application.  Instead, openness and transparency are the

constraints within which a legal system gets built, not options to be

added if convenient to the leaders.  Life governed by software code should

be no less.

Code writing is not litigation.  It is better, richer, more

productive.  But the law is an obvious instance of how creativity and

incentives do not depend upon perfect control over the products

created.  Like jazz, or novels, or architecture, the law gets built

upon the work that went before. This adding and changing is what

creativity always is.  And a free society is one that assures that its

most important resources remain free in just this sense.\footnote{This

quotation is Copyright \copyright{} 2002, Lawrence Lessig. It is

licensed under the terms of

License'' version 1.0} or any later version as published by Creative

Commons.}

\end{quotation}

In essence, lawyers are paid to service the shared commons of legal

infrastructure.  Few citizens defend themselves in court or write their

own briefs (even though they are legally permitted to do so) because

everyone would prefer to have an expert do that job.

The Free Software economy is a market ripe for experts.  It

functions similarly to other well established professional fields like the

law. The GPL, in turn, serves as the legal scaffolding that permits the

creation of this vibrant commercial and noncommercial Free Software

economy.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\chapter{A Tale of Two Copyleft Licenses}

\section{Historical Motivations for the General Public License}

\section{Proto-GPLs And Their Impact}

\section{The GNU General Public License, Version 1}