[POLITICS] Re: When is the Last Time You Booted to Windows?

[Les Mikesell]

On Sat, 2006-02-18 at 15:07, Peter Gordon wrote:

> Perhaps, but the GPL is excellent in that it *enforces* the Freedoms,
> and actively prevents people from changing it just a little and making
> that new product proprietary.

Which has no effect on the amount or quality of free software.  Do
you consider yourself competent to decide for yourself if you
want to use a proprietary product for some purpose or other?  Do
you really need some fanatic dictating your choices for you?

> In effect, it *guarantees* that *anyone*
> who gets a copy of the program *must* have the freedoms to study,
> modify, and/or redistribute the program under these same conditions.

It accomplishes that by reducing the amount of software than
can be available.  It can't force people to make new software,
it can only prevent people from sharing their work in any
way not dictated by the GPL.

> The MIT/X11 and revised BSD licenses (along with other similar licenses)
> are usually for the benefit of the developers (essentially, anything
> done with such code is legal so long as copyright notices and such are
> left intact); whereas the GPL in fact is for the distinct benefits of
> the end-users (who could be, potentially, developers too).

Many useful software components have been released back under
freely redistributable licenses by companies that used and
improved them in proprietary products.  I don't see how anyone
can find fault with that model.  NFS probably wouldn't exist
otherwise, along with a lot of the X code.  This code has the
same benefit to the end user as anything GPL'd.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com