That is the point people always miss.
RMS believes that end user of software / hardware should be in complete control, it was/is never about developers.
BSD/MIT/etc lic may provide for more developer freedom, but often they are used to restrict user freedom as the code is folded/packaged into commercial projects with non-free licenses
And to preclude modifications which prevent him from effectively monetizing his labour is to infringe on his freedom.
Prehaps it would not be if money (etc.) didnt exist. It's always the way, however, with idealists to prescribe policies that make people free in their utopia but cause chaos in our reality.
This sounds a lot like the people saying that adblocker software is infringing the freedom of people trying to monetize their websites (or maybe even "stealing" from them). And I think the same response applies: the fact that your business model isn't compatible with adblocker software, or with my choice of software license, isn't my problem.
Plus it seems extra presumptuous to claim some kind of inherent right to profit off derivative works of my software. You can only distribute derivative works of it at all because I've granted you a license. A royalty-free one at that! With the only condition being the copyleft condition: that you keep any derived works as open as the original. If you don't like that condition, we can negotiate a commercial license on whatever terms you want, with appropriate payment. Or you can write your own software...
Sure, but one's choice of the GPL has signalled that one wishes that others be permitted the freedom to build upon the work and do as they wish [0] with their additions -as well as the original work- just so long as they -upon request- distribute the original and their additions to folks who have received the binaries.
[0] This includes charging for access to compiled versions of the software, access to support and documentation, etc. etc. etc. [1]
Since we're in a capitalist system, monetization of one's labour is hugely important from real-term freedom. To deny people that is to make them less free.
So the most permissive licence is the one providing the most freedom.
Who's claiming that? On the other hand, I've met more than a few pro-FSF people who seem to think it's cromulent to claim that I don't have the right to profit off my work (which is insane; you can pick whatever license you'd like, copyleft or not, and so can I).
Which is the exact purpose of a copyleft license.
Likely they said it is unethical for you to distribute software with out access to the code. Which you interpreted to be against profiting since you likely believe that open source == no profit.
Turns out that you need capital to do that, and the FSF's insistence that digital bits as capital is immoral is silly.
Jesus. Read this http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#DoesTheGPLAllowM... and this http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
It's a pity that you're so misinformed. :(
But, clearly, I'm so misinformed. I obviously haven't thought this through. I didn't read everything Stallman wrote a decade ago. And I certainly haven't read the GPL (both v2 and v3) line-by-line to understand its ramifications.
It's a pity you felt like you needed to be an asshole about this.
I -uh- do.
> The GPL is fundamentally incompatible with the notion of software as a capital asset; when its value as a salable object is effectively zero due to the ease of marginal duplication...
Two things
1) That applies to all software. All software -regardless of license- has an effectively-zero duplication cost.
2) You can still sell software distributed under the terms of the GPLv2. You can charge any price you like.
Calling me names doesn't change the falsity of your statement, which was:
> [T]he FSF... [insists] that [treating] digital bits as capital is immoral[.]
This isn't their position. It never was.
You seem to think that the only way a thing can be considered capital is if one retains the exclusive rights to control the distribution of the thing. This is an over-narrow definition of capital. :)
That's not true. Copyright allows the copyright holder to enforce a cost of copying in their license fee. You can illegally copy software at zero cost, but that's not the same thing. I can illegally ignore the GPL, too, but I won't.
> 2) You can still sell software distributed under the terms of the GPLv2. You can charge any price you like.
You're being disingenuous. The purchaser can and will inevitably redistribute the software free, plunging its effective value to zero and turning the only tenable long-term monetization strategy into a labor business. Even Red Hat is a labor business in all but name, they live off support contracts and custom development, and I would be incredibly surprised if you could find a business of nontrivial size--say, $2m/year in revenue--whose products are non-SaaS (i.e., not violating the spirit of the GPL while complying with the letter) and GPL-based for which this is not true.
I mean, this is not some shocking revelation I'm saying here--there's a reason the GPL and especially the AGPL are so popular as the crappy side of dual-license schemes, because it allows a company to hamstring those who would derive from their software while not crippling themselves.
FSF at least supports the concept of government granted monoplies over ideas, I do not. I would love to see the end of copyright, and patents as a concept.
I firmly believe a world with less windows and more linux would be a wonderful place...
That's real messed up.
If I have the freedom to take someone elses freedom away, then that is more freedom until I actually take someones freedom away.
To use an extreme example, if we had the freedom to own slaves you could argue that there where more freedoms available to us. But if you actually want to protect freedom you don't allow people to own slaves.
Further it is not about developer not making money off his/her code, but not exploiting the work of others with and denying follow on developers the work of others.
And that's why we have the GNU toolchain, which is some of the most end user-friendly software ever made?
And GCC has some serious limits when it comes to help other tools, because RMS (probably rightfully) fears that if GCC outputs to detailed backend information, people would start adding non-GPL software after it and build non-GPL compilers on top of GCC.
Which lead to the funny situation of people asking to include LLVM-based tools into Emacs, because LLVM allows to build code-analysis tools GCC just doesn't provide the info for.
IMHO clang's success and maybe even existence is clear result of GCCs restrictions, but removing these restrictions would undermine central principles.
And both compilers are better now than they would be if the other didn't exist, so good for everyone I guess? It doesn't seem possible to reach all goals with just one of them.
> And that's why we have the GNU toolchain, which is some of the most end user-friendly...
Eh? User-friendliness and user freedom aren't the same properties.
Mozilla Science, for example, tries to pair up researchers who have ideas together with developers who can code to build open-source projects. Despite the fact that the researchers may not be able to code, the fact that they have the right to share and modify the code is important.
to put a finer point on it, the concept of "layers of abstraction" is fundamental to computers and software. i can know quite a bit about adjusting the pieces of a program without having the ability to build it as effectively as i modify it.
Or we reject his attempt to lay exclusive claim to a word as all-encompassing as "freedom" and to co-opt it to his personal pet ends. You know, either/or.