| > I'd argue that GNU set out to advance the cause of gaining power over developers Power that is shared equally is not held "over" anyone. Share-and-share alike is not power, its equality. > The ironic thing about FLOSS is that it acts counter to the ideals of libre According to which philosophy? John Locke (1632–1704) rejected several hundred years ago the notion that liberty should have no restrictions. Thus, freedom is not as Sir Robert Filmer defines it: 'A liberty for everyone to do what he likes, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws.' ... Freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of nature. Freedom of people under government is to be under no restraint apart from standing rules to live by that are common to everyone in the society and made by the lawmaking power established in it. Persons have a right or liberty to (1) follow their own will in all things that the law has not prohibited and (2) not be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary wills of others Rules that are common to everyone are not power, and its not counter to the ideals of libre. Shield me against the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary wills of others, and I will have liberty. Proprietary licenses and DRM are frameworks that arbitrary limits who can modify the software, who can read it, and who can use and share it. |
If you want to put it to the test, try creating a legal derivative work of a GPL/LGPL licensed project.
The license has enough grey area that the only guarantee is that the legal system could one day be used to subject you to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary wills of others. Via legal battles initiated by malicious actors and/or as a result of contributions by contributors who don't fully understand the depth of the GPL/LGPL restrictions.
I vote 'no confidence' in the GPL/LGPL license's purported guarantee of freedom. For the same reasons I wouldn't trust an enemy to always speak kindly of me behind my back.
The GPL/LGPL were bourne out of the desire to publicly spite others. They were initially accepted as canon because they were the first copyleft licenses.
I'll never feel safe or protected from legal recourse if I contribute to a GPL/LGPL project because I can never guarantee that the codebase is a completely original work. From a legal standpoint 'good faith' simply isn't good enough.
It's a personal choice. If you feel completely safe contributing under the terms, by all means, I'm not trying to stop you.
"Proprietary licenses and DRM are frameworks that arbitrary limits who can modify the software, who can read it, and who can use and share it."
By all means, I'm not advocating for proprietary licenses or DRM. I'm speaking strictly in terms of OSS (ex MIT) vs FLOSS (GPL/LGPL).
If a company or dev decides to use a proprietary license to protect their invested time/effort, that's their legal right.
DRM is... Well, I'm not going to touch that with a 20ft pole. Hopefully, one day we can find a means to make DRM completely irrelevant and/or unnecessary.