> Restrictive in that it prevents you from fucking people over.
Restrictive in that it controls how you must license derivative works and release source code. It imposes an ideology on others.
> This is like saying laws against slavery restrict freedom (freedom to own slaves).
No, really, it's absolutely nothing like saying that, and if you care about free software (however defined, but in particular along the lines RMS endorses), you should stop using such a fantastically stupid analogy.
Really, the only thing the GPL restricts is your ability to restrict.
(Incidentally, this is comparable to restricting the freedom to enslave; it is a restriction on restriction.)
If you think the GPL somehow "imposes an ideology on others" but literally any other license does not, I am curious as to how. (Hint: a license cannot "impose an ideology"; if you do not agree, you are free to avoid it and stick with BSD code, or whatever else might suit your fancy.)
Whereas you are forced to use an Amazon Kindle (sorry, Swindle)?
Your options there are similar, acquire a license for a commercial book (that you like), hit Project Gutenberg for an open source book, or write your own book...
If you build something you should definitely have something to say about what others can do with your work, especially if you give it away for free. And nobody imposes something on you - you are perfectly free not to use GNU licensed things.
I don't recall arguing otherwise. But compared to the BSD license, it's definitely more restrictive about derivative works. Also, the slavery analogy is stupid.
I think it would be helpful to be clearer as to why you disagree with the analogy rather than simply calling it stupid.
If I had to guess, I would suspect that your real issue is that you do not find the things being restricted to be comparable (i.e., human life/will vs. the use of software), rather than believing that the comparison is somehow invalid for other reasons.
First of all, it's not a good analogy. Software licenses are a contract that you can choose to agree to, whereas laws give you no choice.
Second of all, it is highly debated wheter the restrictions imposed by the GPL are a worthwhile tradeoff; while noone in their right mind claims anybody has a right to own slaves...
And lastly, by comparing the GPL to laws against slavery you are trying to evoke certain associations, much like stallman uses the word swindle instead of kindle -- those are just cheap tricks that distract and make fruitful discussions hard.
That's a strawman. It could also be like saying laws against gay marriage restrict freedom. You aren't making a point about reality, you're just comparing two things that have one thing in common.
You lose your rights to your code if any of your code includes GPL code. Many people who write code necessarily avoid the GPL because of this.
You don't lose the rights to your code. The original copyright owner still owns the copyright on their code. That's why you have to follow the rules of the license they gave you. You can still distribute your code under whatever license you want.
> You can still distribute your code under whatever license you want.
That actually isn't true.
> You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy.
You are required to distribute it under GPL v3. I don't know enough legalese to determine if distributing the modifications alone as a parallel license is allowed.
This is only true if "your" code is a derivative of someone else's code. Putting code that's actually original into a project that also has GPL code in it doesn't mean you have to GPL your code.
Distributing binaries with mixed sources is where it gets hairy.
I'm not sure what you intend with this. I am using that as a counter example to "laws against slavery restrict freedom", because the person I'm responding to was implying that restriction is inherently good: restricting slavery is generally a positive, but restricting gay marriage is generally a negative. The fact that the same idea in two different scenarios can be good or bad means you can't use it as a maxim.
No, the implication of the post to which you were responding is not that restriction is inherently good, but rather that restriction is not inherently bad.
Laws against gay marriage actively restrict freedoms, if you can somehow make a counter argument specifically specifically related to freedoms, please try.
>This is like saying laws against slavery restrict freedom (freedom to own slaves).
They do. Because at current, corporations (aka private prisons) are allowed to own slaves, but I as an individual am not. We can either increase freedom by banning anyone from owning slaves or increase freedom by allowing anyone to own slaves.
Restrictive in that it controls how you must license derivative works and release source code. It imposes an ideology on others.
> This is like saying laws against slavery restrict freedom (freedom to own slaves).
No, really, it's absolutely nothing like saying that, and if you care about free software (however defined, but in particular along the lines RMS endorses), you should stop using such a fantastically stupid analogy.