Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rick888 5812 days ago
"The whole point of the GPL is to stop companies from profiting off of other's programs without also giving something back to the community. Noone in the "pirate movement" supports for-profit piracy or copyright infringement."

Really? so the touchy-feely reasons that most people in the free software movement is a lie? It's all to stop profits? This sure doesn't sound like "freedom" to me. Freedom means you can do whatever the hell you want with my code. This is why I don't support the GPL.

You also bring up another good point. The people of the community want others to respect their own license and ideals yet when they infringe on the rights of others (through copyright infringement), they thinks it's fine.
1 comments
henrikschroder 5812 days ago
Really? so the touchy-feely reasons that most people in the free software movement is a lie?

I think you forgot a verb there?

It's all to stop profits? This sure doesn't sound like "freedom" to me.

I'm not really sure what you're ranting against, but the whole point of the GPL is to force "give some, get some", and to stop people from profiting off of other people's work.

Freedom means you can do whatever the hell you want with my code. This is why I don't support the GPL.

Good for you?

The people of the community want others to respect their own license and ideals yet when they infringe on the rights of others (through copyright infringement), they thinks it's fine.

Which community are you talking about now? The "pirate" community or the "free software" community?

Also, the FSF is of the position that copyrights suck, but that doesn't stop them from making the GPL using existing copyright law. The GPL is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Copyright law is as it is, and therefore we have the GPL as it is. If copyright law was different, for example if software couldn't be copyrighted, we wouldn't have the GPL at all.

link
rick888 5811 days ago
"I'm not really sure what you're ranting against, but the whole point of the GPL is to force "give some, get some", and to stop people from profiting off of other people's work."

My point was that Richard Stallman for years claimed that this wasn't the reason. I also don't really think there was a problem with people "profiting off of other people's work" before the GPL became popular.

When you release something for free, it shouldn't matter if someone makes a profit from it. If you do care, then don't call it "free".

"Which community are you talking about now? The "pirate" community or the "free software" community?"

This community, for starters. Check out the lasted post about the guy from Thesis VS Wordpress. The majority of the people here on HN support Wordpress.

"Also, the FSF is of the position that copyrights suck, but that doesn't stop them from making the GPL using existing copyright law. The GPL is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Copyright law is as it is, and therefore we have the GPL as it is. If copyright law was different, for example if software couldn't be copyrighted, we wouldn't have the GPL at all."

The whole point of the GPL is so people have the freedom to tinker with the source code (this has been said by Stallman many times). If we had no copyright laws, there would be nothing stopping people from releasing binaries only. The difference would be that you could share the copyrighted works with anybody.

Would this really benefit the community?

link
henrikschroder 5811 days ago
The whole point of the GPL is so people have the freedom to tinker with the source code (this has been said by Stallman many times). If we had no copyright laws, there would be nothing stopping people from releasing binaries only. The difference would be that you could share the copyrighted works with anybody.

Would this really benefit the community?

The flipside is also that everyone would be free to reverse-engineer everything, which is a pretty powerful good, but I see your point and I agree with it, it's probably better to have copyright than to not have it.

Then again, you could of course have a completely different society where all software must be available in source form by law, but I have a hard time seeing that happen anywhere. :-)

link