Russ Allbery [14/Jul 8:09am -07] wrote: > Personally, I agree with the fight against corporate control of software, > but I think copyleft is only one tool that is only useful in some narrow > and specific situations. It has helped the Linux kernel immensely, and I > think good lessons should be learned from that. If you have a massive > copyleft code base and vast commercial incentives for contributing to that > code base, copyleft is incredibly powerful and forces a lot of code to be > free software that wouldn't otherwise be. > > But I think its utility in most other situations is overstated. I find it > very hard to see a way in which copyleft matters one iota to the > advancement of free software when used as the license for some small > personal project, for example. I do not use copyleft for any of my > personal software, not because I disagree with its use tactically as a > tool, but because I cannot envision any scenario in which it would ever be > meaningful *for that piece of software*. Copyleft imposes a bunch of > overhead (or at least does so in theory; many of the people who use the > GPL have clearly never read it and don't actually follow its rules) and > requires users read tedious legal documents, and I personally don't like > imposing those costs for no obvious gain. > > This is my problem with your argument: It is absurdly reductive to the > point of being religious rather than reasoned. Copyleft is not some > magic spell that protects us from corporations. It's just a tool, which is > useful in some situations and not in others.
You're right to argue against the idea that it's a magic spell and it's interesting to read your arguments against the view that copyleft is an effective means to the ends for which people think is useful. But going to the other extreme and calling it just a tool is, I think, just as reductive. I am proud every time I put the GPL on something I write, because in the act of doing so I align my activity and intent with a strong form of the free software sharing ethos that's a significant part of my motivation for working on it. Actually, I am not sure I care that much about preventing corporations from reusing my work in the way that the GPL makes them not able to do; I haven't thought about it for a long time, at least. This expressive role of the GPL is what matters to me. It would be reductive to try to reduce that expressive act to just "Sean will make more contributions if he can experience a feeling of pride, and we can put that on the scales alongside the effects copyleft might have on corporate contributions" (I'd probably lose!). -- Sean Whitton
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