Re: Freedom of Software protected by GPL -- not BS

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Re: Freedom of Software protected by GPL -- not BS
by Ray on Friday 09/Jan/2004, @09:31

>Mr. Velve, the GPL is not about the freedom to take (like BSD) but the freedom to give. ... they are concerned to see their work to stay free.

Sorry, the GPL is not just about seeing the existing work stay free. That's an acceptable summary for the LGPL, AFSL 2.0, and quite a number of other open source licenses. If all you are concerned about is preventing open source software from being usurped, then there are plenty of licenses beside the GPL that will achieve this goal.

The GPL is about taking and increasing the amount of software bound by the GPL. This is exactly what the GPL does. Merely linking to a GPL'ed lib makes your entire application GPL'ed. Please read the GPL FAQ: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfLibraryIsGPL

You may like the viral aspects of the GPL. That's fine. Other's don't and for many of them, it is indeed a problem. But please, don't cast the GPL as just protecting open source and definitely don't portray it as the only viable option.

>You are clearly wasting your time here.

If you are chosing to ignore the reality of the GPL, or intentionally misrepresenting the GPL so it can infect other code, or actually feel that the work of others somehow automagically belongs to everybody, simply because they link to a GPL'ed library, then yes indeed he is wasting his time.

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Re: Freedom of Software protected by GPL -- not BS
by Mike on Thursday 11/Mar/2004, @02:03

From a philosophical perspective all software functionality will eventually become "free". GPL is merely a catalyst for the inevitable. 1-1=1

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