> Proprietary software is a non-issue to people who don't choose to use it.
In the narrow, license-dependency related sense we are discussing here, yes. In a wider sense: don't get me started. > Restrictive licenses... They do not constitute a legitimate contract Depends on the legal system you live in. For me, "You can use my stuff if you meet my conditions" is good enough if the conditions are ok. > Obviously the phrase is not literally true - source code is not a scarce > physical object one holds in one's hands I am fully aware of this fact. What I meant was that the figurative meaning of the phrase is also not really true. > vigilance is necessary to make sure an import of an import of an import > doesn't inject its legal obligations onto your projects! Technical solution: _nimble_ could easily have an option which lists the licenses of all packages in the dependency tree to be installed and prompts the user for final approval. If you don't like the license, don't install it. > Finding that an essential module (or a module an essential module depends on, > etc) is restrictively licensed is a major blow. The freedom to license one's code as one sees fit in a reasonable way is more important than this. Nim should not push people in any direction here, but leave the choice to the user. > Code from a restrictively licensed module cannot be copied or refactored into > a free module (including the Nim compiler itself, stdlib, or core tooling). > You are forced to reinvent the wheel, but you still subject yourself to legal > danger if your re-implementation is deemed too similar! Probably true for most proprietary licenses, but not for most copyleft-licensed software. GPL actually protects from code patents pretty well (something the copyfree licenses you seem to advocate don't) and I have not seen anybody get into legal trouble for genuinely re-implementing an idea from GPLed software yet. > > I frankly don't care that much about Nims popularity, as long as it's big > > enough to survive and improve. > > Then you should politely ignore the "Nim Advocacy & Promotion Strategies" > thread, which obviously does aim at improving Nim's popularity. If in that thread measures are proposed which I see as harmful to the language, like politicizing it, it would be irrational of me to ignore it. > People like Richard Stallman and Coraline Ada Ehmke are the agitators who > should have been told to "shut up and code". I'm **really** trying to resist the urge to tell that to somebody else right now.. :o) Openly agitating for something is perfectly ok by me as long as people don't act in bad faith to make others go along. ATM, I only see the CoC artists do that, not the FSF. > You can't ignore the people who've started this war, .. Another piece of overly dramatic language. > .. and only blame those acting in self-defense! I don't blame, that would be a moral argument. I try to make a rational argument.
