[belorn]

I know that reading skills are sometimes low, but seriously, you should try reread what I wrote.

> Ok so first off. You just compared a HUGE community of software developers who use BSD/MIT licences, to drug cartels and thieves

No, I described the BSD/MIT community as one that indiscriminately gives (in the comparison, people who give indiscriminately money to poor people who ask). Which then comes back to you being confused. If you are not confused, I can not see how you so completely misunderstood it.

> If I wrote a 100% compatible alternative to GCC tomorrow, that produced 500% more efficient binaries, with a 200% speed increase in compile time, but released it under the BSD license

If I gave 500% more money to people in need than the red cross, but gave it indiscriminately to anyone who ask, would that improve peoples life? Army lords that recruits child armies would be happy to get some of that money, as would drug cartels. Terrorist also. But 500% is a bigger number than 100% and I am not preventing the original target of helping poor people. Poor people in need, terrorists and drug cartels alike get money! Win-Win right?

Last: I'm not telling you that you should use the GPL. Not at all. If you feel BSD/MIT is right for you do that. I'm saying don't get on some high fucking horse telling people who choose not to use BSD, that what they're doing is "wrong" because it doesn't fit with your specific ideology.

[stephenr]

> you should try reread what I wrote

you know you are right. Absolutely, you weren't comparing those who provide code under non-GPL licenses to cartels and thieves.

You were, and are comparing companies and individuals make 100% legal use of code that is released under a software license you happen to disagree with, to cartels, thieves and apparently now terrorists.

That's so much better.

> Last: I'm not telling you that you should use the GPL

RMS/etc is telling everyone loud and clear that non-GPL code is "wrong", hence those using a BSD/MIT license are wrong-doers.

Again, so much better.

[belorn]

  "Releasing your code under one of the BSD licenses,
  or some other permissive non-copyleft license,
  is not doing wrong*"

When you can find a quote that contradicts that, you can claim that RMS/etc is telling everyone that non-gpl code is wrong. Until then, you can keep repeating this falsehood and I will keep looking at you as if you were a crazy person.

[stephenr]

> The only code that helps us and not our adversaries is copylefted code.

[belorn]

The free software movement was created to stop the proprietary software model. It is the reason the movement was created.

For profit companies are created in order to create profit. Environmentalism was created to regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment. Police was created to stop criminals.

Organizations has goals, and they want to achieve them. Permissive license both helps the free software movement, but also makes their goal harder to achieve, thus they favor Copyleft licenses which only helps the free software movement. It doesn't make permissive bad, wrong, evil or any other labels like that. It simply is not as good as copyleft for achieving the free software movements goal.

In what way is this surprising?

[stephenr]

RMS doesn't just "favour" GPL licensed code - he actively rejects objectively better code and even rejects collaborating with other projects, simply because they are not GPL licensed.

So, how is that not calling something "bad"?

[stephenr]

Further-more, (i knew i'd find the damn quote eventually):

> Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.

http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-licensing&m=89249041326259&w=2

[teddyh]

What? That quote does not support your claim either. What the quote calls “non-free” software is proprietary software. BSD licensed software is, on the contrary, free software.

I have seen hints of this misconception before, but is this really a common thing? Do some people really believe that “free software” is exclusively GPL software?