[epistasis]

Let me preface my comment by saying that the purpose of my comment is to let you know why I, an unconverted heathen, do not find your chain of comments compelling. I do not mean to convince you of my point of view, or to refute your points, but tell you why I'm unmoved.

Repeating the same mantra, more forcefully, does not make it any more convincing or true.

I find RMS's reasoning fundamentally flawed, overly simplistic, and though perhaps good in the short-term (less than a decade), detrimental to his stated goals over longer terms. Every couple years I revisit it, and discuss with true believers like you, and am just as unconvinced.

GPL denies me and all users freedoms, and the inability of GPL supporters to even acknowledge that point tells me that politics has overtaken philosophy. The arguments for the GPL may have had more sway over me back in the 90s, but now with decades of actual data from BSD projects, I'm less than convinced that GPL offers more freedom for anybody. In fact, the exact opposite appears to be true.

Politicking is a way to shut off people's brains long enough that lots of people can move in the same direction. Politicking has it's uses, but it has to stop and be reevaluated in order to make sure that his direction is correct, and that has not seemed to happen in the past few decades.

[antirez]

Exactly, if you do an history check, GPL and similar restrictive licenses were used in the last decade a lot by companies wanting to retain control over the code, while BSD / MIT projects never incurred in the issues GPL-convinced people claimed to be the big risks, but effectively provided more freedom everybody.

However to be fully honest, there is something new in the horizon now. The fact is that AWS and other similar service provides are starting to make it almost impossible for BSD projects to use the old viable business model of selling services. Now that BSD projects are "embedded" into AWS (or other) as a "just use" products where all the problems are solved by the service provider, open source as we traditionally thought at it may be a bit at risk. It's not clear to me what the fix for this is. I'm not ok with removing rights from my OSS code, but I feel there is something wrong if the value generated by OSS code is captured mostly by big players selling services.

[robgibbons]

You've made a claim that GPL denies you, and all users, freedoms, but you haven't explained why. I for one, as a GPL advocate, would be interested to hear your reasoning.

[orangeshark]

My understanding of the freedom for GPL is to guarantee the end user to have the freedom. What freedom does a user of a software have if all the open source code is used by some proprietary software? Of course, this does not guarantee freedom to developers, the users of these free software libraries. As an end user of software I like the concept of the GPL and the freedoms it wants to provide, but as a developer not so much (unless I am going to release it GPL anyways).

[epistasis]

> What freedom does a user of a software have if all the open source code is used by some proprietary software?

Exactly the same freedom that the user has if that proprietary software did not use the GPL software. It's unchanged. These two worlds do not differ, either the proprietary product doesn't exist, or it reimplemented whatever code was GPLd. The GPL has had no positive impact, there is no more source code available.

Meanwhile, the GPL has restricted the freedom of users from distributing the code as part of a different project.

The GPL is not about freedom for users, it is about control for the original authors. It is about making sure that nobody benefits from the GPL code without making all the rest of the code GPL. Now you may say, that this control of users and programmers means there is more freedom for users. I don't know how, but presumably because there is now more GPL code out there than if it had been an open source license. THAT'S the assumption and the leap that I do not believe, based on the data at hand. I do not believe that the GPL makes more source code available than BSD.

And further, I take umbrage at the unwillingness to even acknowledge that the GPL denies the freedoms granted by open source licenses, all because "freedom" has been narrowly redefined into one thing only: the "freedom from" somebody else using your code without contributing back the changes. Which is a lot like the "freedom from" somebody else using your code without paying you. "Restrictive" means less "freedom," just using a different word that is not loaded with peculiar definitions.

Compared to something like BSD, the GPL is about freedom for the code authors to restrict use of the source code. That is absolutely 100% fine! Go to town! But don't tell me its about user freedom, that's not OK. It makes no sense at all to me. It comes across to me like War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. IMHO, history has proven that the "user freedom" arguments about the GPL are wrong, it's about "programmer freedom." People and companies, including me, use GPL when we want to make code available but still want to control it. It's all about having less freedom for people that use the code.

[BjoernSchiessle]

> I don't know how, but presumably because there is now more GPL code out there than if it had been an open source license. THAT'S the assumption and the leap that I do not believe, based on the data at hand.

One example which disprove you believes and whatever data you refer to is the Objective-C compiler. NeXT wouldn't have released it as Open Source if gcc wouldn't be GPL licensed. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C

Further it sounds like you want to argue that the GPL is not a Open Source license. This is also wrong by all reliable sources, e.g. the Open Source Initiative: https://opensource.org/licenses

[epistasis]

It seems that the key part of your source is:

>In order to circumvent the terms of the GPL, NeXT had originally intended to ship the Objective-C frontend separately, allowing the user to link it with GCC to produce the compiler executable. After being initially accepted by Richard M. Stallman, this plan was rejected after Stallman consulted with GNU's lawyers and NeXT agreed to make Objective-C part of GCC.[7]

Given that both NeXT and Stallman changed their minds on this issue, I'm not sure that you can argue that Objective-C would not have eventually been open sourced. Especially given Clang.

I'm not sure why you perceive that I think that GPL is not Open Source. Quite the contrary. I'm basically arguing that "Free" software misses the point of open source software. Which is in counter to these very well known opinions:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h...

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.en.h...

And primarily I object to Stallman's hijacking of the term "free" where the only thing I see is control.

[jumpwah]

The FSF defines freedom as the four freedoms. Copyleft is about preserving those four freedoms. Copyleft is still free software in terms of the four freedoms. Sure, you could take freedom as being able to do completely anything (or more things than just the four freedoms), but this is like saying the declaration of human rights is bad because it doesn't give you the freedom to enslave others.

So the question comes down to whether or not you think nonfree software is a bad thing. If you don't think nonfree software is bad, then how does it hold that you're saying you care more about user freedom than those who use copyleft?

To me, those who really like and care about freedom to use, study, modify and share software have no problem with copyleft. The people that seem to have a problem with it seem to just want to deny users that freedom. That's really what it is all about. I don't know how on earth you came across this as being like "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength", when not having the four freedoms in the case of nonfree software is the real slavery here. And copyleft prevents such nonfree software.

TLDR haiku by RMS:

    Using GPL
    is encroaching on our right
    to encroach on yours

BTW, the LGPL, GPL and AGPL licenses are all "open source" in the sense that they are approved by the OSI, who are the ones who created and defined the term "open source" in the first place. So saying the GPL is not an "open source" license is technically incorrect and confusing.

[phant0mas]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxIEDNyZOkA&feature=youtu.be...

Martin Fink, EVP & CTO of HP on why we should use the GPL

[epistasis]

I'm not seeing a "why" in here, just a "do this". There are no "why"s that are specific to any features of the GPL.

[phant0mas]

Well I am clearly seeing a "Use a copyleft license so a community can be created by making other users share their modifications".

That is a feature of the GPL!

[shizzy0]

I like the concept of freedom as an American, but as a cotton farmer not so much.