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Re: Irony
- From: dewar at gnat dot com (Robert Dewar)
- To: espie at quatramaran dot ens dot fr, gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 08:38:45 -0500 (EST)
- Subject: Re: Irony
> See, not everyone believe that GPL software is free. To me, it's a close
> approximation, but BSD and MIT come much closer to it.
Right, it's sort of like having a democratic pariliament that ensures
freedom, but is still limited in that it cannot abolish itself and install
a dictator.
> This is not surprising, since RMS designed the GPL as a weapon to use
> against proprietary software vendors.
It is not a "weapon" at all. Simply that those who use the GPL choose to
ensure that their work is not used by any proprietary vendors in what they
consider an inappropriate manner. Microsoft uses a much more restrictive
license that does not allow ANY other vendor, proprietary or free, to use
their software in this sense. The Microsoft license is resrtrictive, but
I would not call it a "weapon" against all other vendors. The law of the
land permits (even encourages) people to claim IPR rights and control the
use of their created material. In the "Free Software" world, we choose to
execute those rights to share with others who think it is beneficial to
have software be free, but not to share with those who think otherwise.
We like the democratic parliament, but we insist that it stay around :-)
If you think the USA is the "Land of the not really free", because the
constitution restricts what we the people can do via our elected
representatives, that's fine, but it's not a common viewpoint :-)