After takin' a swig o' grog, Hyman Rosen belched out this bit o' wisdom: > Rjack wrote: >> Egad!! I thought *freedom* for software developers meant licensing >> their software any way they wished. I didn't know it was the GPL or >> the highway. > > This is absolutely correct. Freedom for software developers means that > they may license their software any way they wish. The FSF promotes > freedom for users, however, not software developers, and the freedom > of users is adversely affected when software developers choose non-free > licenses. > >> Your link to the self-serving rant by Richard Stallman does nothing >> but confirm his monomanical compulsion to destroy the concept of >> intellectual property. > > Stallman believes that users of software should have the freedom to > run, read, modify, and share it.
And often, it is developers that are users. > In the case of X Window, for a very > long time its users had those freedoms, but they could have been lost > because the organization primarily responsible for it had the legal > right to do so. Therefore, he urges that free software developers use > the GPL to prevent situations like this from occurring. > > Notice that the FSF does nothing at all to prevent software developers > from doing anything they wish, as long as they do not involve themselves > with GPLed code. They operate by presenting attractive alternatives so > that developers of non-free software are disadvantaged in the marketplace > by having to duplicate functionality that is available for free to free > software developers. To the extent that this upsets you, they are succeeding. The GPL is what has made Free software possible. -- Now it's time to say goodbye To all our company... M-I-C (see you next week!) K-E-Y (Why? Because we LIKE you!) M-O-U-S-E. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
