[oso2k]

For one, ESR isn't asking that the FSF change (directly). He's asking that FSF change with respect to GCC and the audience it serves. There's many developers, and especially young developers, that feel the GPL & FSF are "over-principled". I think we can all agree that "Open Source" has largely won.

But if you ask about "Free Software," and take github as data point, I'd say "Free Software" is losing, and is losing because, like proprietary software, it's "over-principled". Young people everywhere, "feel" like content, many forms of "public" data, and the tools to use, create, play, view, and store such content & data ought to be "free as in beer" (or close to it) based on the principle that the effort to copy & transfer data, content, binary, and source is "almost free". Whether there is a restriction in creating plug-ins, linking or modifying code (as in the GPL/Free Software), or copying binaries and/or content as in proprietary software, these are still restrictions.

This is the reason why I prefer the more permissive licenses for my works like the BSD and MIT licenses. Essentially, my work is a gift, in the purist sense, to the entire universe. To place restrictions on my gift is to have given the world a poison and not a gift.

The reason why is easier to understand when you consider the quote by Jim Warren from a 1976 ACM Programming Language newsletter [1], referencing Bill Gates' famous letter to the Homebrew Computing Club, "There is a viable alternative to the problems raised by Bill Gates in his irate letter to computer hobbyists concerning 'ripping off' software. When software is free, or so inexpensive that it's easier to pay for it than to duplicate it, then it won't be 'stolen'."

Said another way, people will continue to do the "wrong" thing so long as it takes less effort than to do the "right" thing. In my mind, we should be incentivizing the "right" things, like openness, sharing, technical merit, and capability.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_BASIC#An_early_free_softwa...

[belorn]

The data made over repositories like Google code, debian and similar places where entries has some form of minimum standard, GPL licenses are a strong majority, and is increasingly used.

So young people are either not serious enough to warrant inclusion in the 40 000 list of programs in Debian (doubtful), or your assumptions are incorrect.

> To place restrictions on my gift is to have given the world a poison and not a gift.

Next time you gift a beer to a friend, I hope you will allow them to hit you with it. Adding restriction on hitting you with the beer is the same as putting poison in the beer which would kill your friend.

[oso2k]

I'm a Google Code user myself. I prefer it (and inDefero) over the likes of bitbucket, github, savannah, berlios, etc. But that doesn't make github any less popular. I don't understand the analogy you're trying to make by bringing in the debian repositories into the discussion. It seems to me like you're saying making friends on Friendster are more legitimate than friends made on Facebook because it was an initial innovator in the social network. Here's a 2013 that states github has 50% more projects then the next repository (sourceforge)[1]. Here's a 2011 that discusses when github turned 1 million accounts [2].

My argument is that many young developers don't care where they get their code, what license it has, etc. They just want to build, create, collaborate [3]. A secondary argument is that many people feel the GPL is a barrier to collaboration.

When it comes to gifts and beer, I would hope my friend wouldn't hit me with it nor would I put poison in his beer. They're (implicitly) allowed to hit me with it, but I don't expect such a thing to occur. Nor should they expect me to put poison in it. That's all a matter of trust. And the GPL, proprietary licenses, DRM are instruments of distrust.

In the end, you always have choice. I choose to live by the philosophies that "Givers Gain" and people do want to be good people. I understand not everyone has as altruistic intentions, heck, I work for those people. But I also understand that if I want to see the world change, I need to start by changing myself.

[1] http://software.ac.uk/resources/guides/choosing-repository-y...

[2] http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2076108/github-domi...

[3] http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/07/16/0220240/github...

[belorn]

Debian repositories are not gateless, in that you can't just create a repository with a text file in it and call it a project. You have to be sponsored, which mean you got to have some working code that is useful for someone.

Or to take a statitic look, 2 out of 3 forks on github are empty[1]. The quality per "project" on github is order of magnitude less than on debian.

You can test this out by randomly picking github repositories and read code. It takes several tries on the randomizer to even get code, and then even more to get code that actually do something.

Using statistics from more mature projects will provide different results than code just thrown at the wall.

As for the beer, it is a bit of a fringe view to allow others assault oneself with beer bottles. Most people will expect physical assault to have legal repercussions. The GPL in the same way trust that most people will not go out to hurt others, but in the case they will, repercussion will happen.

I now really hope you never end up in a court, complaining about assault, and having your comment above used as evidence against you. You basically gave everyone a license to hit you with beer bottles.

[1] http://blog.ram.rachum.com/post/4472104984/2-out-of-3-github...

[oso2k]

You're just being silly and overly literal. Having gates does not legitimize a project. Being "mature" does not legitimize a project. Only users can legitimize a project, a license, or a philosophy. In that sense, the GPL is losing legitimacy and relevance in the mindshare of young people, IMO. In the same respect, Debian is meeting a similar fate. Does anybody use Debian anymore? Yes, maybe. The new generation of new distributions seem to be built on Ubuntu, not Debian. I know I've never used Debian, and it took Ubuntu to teach me the "Debian-way" when I had grown up on using Red Hat/Fedora.

Implicitly, everyone has a license to do harm to you. Which is why some people feel governments exist to protect you from others, and others from you. But, laws & rules all have two fatal flaws. "It's only illegal if you get caught" and "Rules aren't made to keep the bad guys out; they're made to keep the good guys in." Meditate on that.