[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?

[stephenr]

I'll accept your point, but the FSF messaging about this is not clear - one one page it lists BSD as "a free software licence" but on another identifies it separately (both in text and in a diagram) to "free software".

Either way, RMS comments/actions re: BSD licensed code still don't match up with the "official" policy.

[teddyh]

Link, please?