281–290 of 338 posts
What many GPL supporters fail to understand is that GPL doesn't hinder or hurt big companies at all. If they find a GPL-licensed piece of software they need, they just pay their developers to make another proprietary one. With the exception of huge projects like Linux, it's a rounding error for them. No, the only ones the GPL hinders are small-time freelance devs and small devs shops who are trying to make a living.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The GPL is absolutely restricting what people do with software. To say otherwise is a lie.
No. Users of GPL software are under the right to be left alone if they want to modify or share the program. The developer who want to add restrictions on the program is the one who infringe on the users right.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Property rights for everyone except software developers.
If your freedom/rights takes the freedom/rights of others away, what may you argue about, if your freedom/rights is also taken away? Because something might be inconvenient to you, it doesn't make it automatically wrong. There's a distinct line between free as in freedom and free as in arbitrariness. The former comes with responsibilities, the later without.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because they might be paying someone else to do the development.
So this is about protecting the rights of people rich enough to hire developers to work on bespoke projects that cannot be distributed as proprietary. I.e. Large corporations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Users of GPL software are under the right to be left alone if they want to modify or share the program. The developer who want to add restrictions on the program is the one who infringe on the users right.
This is true but irrelevant because nobody is talking about adding restrictions to existing GPL software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is true but irrelevant because nobody is talking about adding restrictions to existing GPL software.
There is nothing you can do with non-GPL software that you cannot do with GPL software that does not involve distributing code with more restrictions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I interpret geocar's point as being that the (L)GPL is the reason that Apple had to contribute the improvements that they made to Konqueror/KHTML back to the community in the form of WebKit: sure, they chose KHTML because of its technical merits but, having done so, they were obliged to make their improvements to the LGPL code available under the same license, thus allowing Google to use it in Chrome.
Actually, in the Debug podcast, it was revealed that they were going to go with Mozilla's effort and all that held them back was that KHTML was so much simpler to explain, though the simplicity was something it lost in rewrites. WebKit, regardless of original License, was likely going to be open source either way just as Darwin was even without the License requirement. The point here is that non-free uses inside OS X…
Actually, that's completely irrelevant.
The GPL ensured that Google could benefit from Apple's decision to use KHTML.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My job involves creating non-free software. > But it strikes me as ironic that RMS talks about "freedom" when really he's advocating restricting your freedom to use the software. 1. The GPL isn't restricting your freedom, your employer is. You are working under contract terms and policy selected by your employer. Your preferences aren't relevant. 2. The GPL isn't restricting your employer from using the software, j…
The GPL is absolutely restricting what people do with software. To say otherwise is a lie.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If LLVM is so bad RMS doesn't have a problem with LLVM because it's bad, he has a problem with it because it's good. > the biggest hurdle to people caring about copyleft is the sheer tonnage of disrespect people like RMS show to others No, the biggest hurdles to people caring about copyleft are by far the incompatibilities with accepted practices and existing software that make it a lot of work to comply with copyl…
The problem with RMS is that he always assumes people to agree with his way of thinking. His uncompromising tone is also a big problem. I know, programmers are supposed to be emotionless meritocratic robots, but this Old Boys Know Best attitude is precisely why RMS and GCC is losing user share so quickly these days: the extremist meritocracy of programming culture is actually highly male-centric, and it simply scares…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If your freedom/rights takes the freedom/rights of others away, what may you argue about, if your freedom/rights is also taken away? Because something might be inconvenient to you, it doesn't make it automatically wrong. There's a distinct line between free as in freedom and free as in arbitrariness. The former comes with responsibilities, the later without.
This is true but irrelevant because the freedom to distribute software without the source code does not take away anyone else's rights.
Furthermore take a look at the "USL v. BSDi" lawsuit, where BSD was sued by AT&T for infringing copyright-laws against their own(BSD) source-code, which was incorporated into USL(AT&T's) UNIX-variants!
"Freedom" comes with responsibility, if you want carefree "arbitrariness", then say so, but please don't mix them together, they are fundamentally different!