[GNUz] Early examples of the GPL?

[Jim Cheetham]

I've just been reading a history of scientific conflict, and Sir Isaac 
Newton's chapter reveals some interesting things ...

Basically, Newton thought that everyone should be happy to provide him 
with data, so that he can publish the "meaning" of it. In the 1690s, he 
asked John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, to provide him with 
observation data, which was quickly provided, along with some 
(erroneous) calculations.

Newton responded with insults, saying basically "send me only the data, 
or I'll have to ask someone else".

Flamsteed thought that it his job to provide data freely to the nation, 
and that going to someone else was not the proper thing to do. Newton 
raised the stakes, offering money for the data. Flamsteed's response 
seems to set the tone for some of RMS' thoughts :-

"All the return I can allow or ever expected from such persons with whom 
I corresponded is only to have the result of their studies imparted as 
freely as I afford them the effect of mine or my pains."

( _The Correspondence of Isaac Newton_, ed. H.W.Turnbull et.al., 7 vols, 
Cambridge University Press 1959-77, vol 4 p.58 )

-jim