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Comment by spacelizard | Hacker News Reader

It has happened in many cases. Many companies have used, modified and contributed to GCC in the path with no complaints. The whole anti-copyleft thing did not start until recently, because of increased resistance from companies like Apple who have an active anti-freedom political agenda.

The simple act of refusing to use proprietary software does not give users freedom in software, it just prevents them from being subjugated by that one particular piece of proprietary software. Copyleft is also not necessary to have freedom, but it is pragmatic in that it leverages copyright in an attempt to further the political goal of freedom. It would be nice if this didn't have to be done, but we cannot ignore the issue of copyright, it will not go away quietly.

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> It has happened in many cases. Many companies have used, modified and contributed to GCC in the path with no complaints.

Hardly. Companies have complained plenty, but escaping the network effects of the GPL was expensive enough that they couldn't do much about it.

> The simple act of refusing to use proprietary software does not give users freedom in software, it just prevents them from being subjugated by that one particular piece of proprietary software.

Why not? If they want open-source software, they can use it. There, they're free.

> Copyleft is not necessary to have freedom, but it is pragmatic in that it leverages copyright in an attempt to further the pro-freedom political agenda.

By attempting to enforce a communist ideal of shared ownership of the means of production. Most reasonable people don't consider that to be 'freedom'.

The only groups that wish to "escape the network effects of the GPL" are proprietary companies that wish to attack their own users' freedoms. The fact that you have a choice of being able to reject proprietary software is not the issue at hand, because people always have that choice, and it is good that we do. The issue is why you should make the choice and what ramifications it has.

>shared ownership of the means of production

I mentioned this in a different thread but this has no context in the current discussion, the "means of production" are a complete non-sequitur in relation to software. Free software isn't "communist," it simply rejects authoritarianism.

Actually, as an liberally licensed open-source author, I wish to "escape the network effects of the GPL" because I want proprietary companies to use my software, too.

That means I have to escape the GPL despite your wanting to force me to participate. You can keep claiming this isn't communism, except that it exactly parallels the Marxist notions of shared ownership.

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