Date: 20 Dec 2001 01:02:13 -0800 From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Stephen J Bevan <stephen@etunnels.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: GPL nonsense: time to stop Message-ID: <f2vgf2w9gq.gf2@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <15392.14082.852072.868370@apathy.etunnels.com> References: <20011218121011.E21649@monorchid.lemis.com> <4hzo4hyv3c.o4h@localhost.localdomain> <4.3.2.7.2.20011217221801.02841bc0@localhost> <0gn10gyxwd.10g@localhost.localdomain> <15391.50782.619686.198748@apathy.etunnels.com> <736673ztx8.673@localhost.localdomain> <15392.14082.852072.868370@apathy.etunnels.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Stephen J Bevan <stephen@etunnels.com> writes:
> Gary W. Swearingen writes:
> > I welcome a thoughtful answer as well as an answer to why more people
> > don't find this distasteful ploy to be bullying.
>
> My thoughtful answer is that they -- me -- simply don't see it as
> either a distateful plot or bullying.
I had "ploy", but "plot" IS more accurate, now that you mention it.
You still didn't answer "why", but I guess it IS a hard question. Let
me play devil's advocate and answer for you: "Because it isn't
distasteful or bullying." But it's not a good answer. Here's a better
one: Most people don't find the punishment of non-GPL open source
developers by GPL developers distasteful or bullying because they either
haven't thought much about it or they have and came to the erroneous
conclusion that there is no punishment or unfairness or they want to
force non-GPL open source developers to become GPL developers.
> RMS is quite up front about his views
> IMHO you either pay the price or walk way.
("H" for "Honest"?) So why is there so much talk of "sharing" and "this
is free software" and "anyone may"? And how does that attitude mesh with
the fourth GNU Freedom:
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to
the public, so that the whole community benefits.
What does "public" mean to you? "Upfront", my foot. Sure, most people
soon understand the essential "price" of "free" software, but there's
a huge amount of misleading propaganda drawing people to help RMS punish
non-copyleft software developers, many of whom would either prefer to
not punish closed source developers or other open developers (through an
escape clause for the latter). Cigarettes have clear warnings too and
foolish people still take up smoking by the millions.
But misleading propaganda only helps make the bullying distasteful.
Bullying has to do mostly with unfairness. The GPL developer says
"I can use your software, but you can't use mine" and "put the software
that you're letting me use for free under the GPL, or else I'll force
you to choose between writing you're own, buying it, or getting out
of software development -- it's your free choice".
> The only person I can see forcing you is yourself.
So you can't understand why I would say "the government is forcing us to
license our dogs", because we're free to get rid of them? Sorry. We
don't speak the same language. End of discussion.
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?f2vgf2w9gq.gf2>