Plasticity Is CAD for Artists

Because I'm not beholden to your ideals. GPL is tantamount to a parasite, infecting everything it touches, regardless of the wishes of those who'd make use of the GPL'd software.

I was a contributor to FOSS until I had to make a choice to step back from excessive keyboard use due to RSI. I love and embrace open source software and the ideals behind it, but I believe everyone should be given their own freedoms.

The plugin boundary should be exactly that, a boundary between the primary app and any created plugins. Why do you feel entitled to force a license decision on a third party's work? Yeah, my work might not function without your code, but your code is your code and my plugin is mine. If I choose to write a utility that enhances your code in ways I want, is that not the benefit and flexibility that FOSS clamors about? Hell, what if someone else adopts a similar API and I choose to take my plugin that direction? That's my choice to make, but forcing GPL on my code may now be hampering my freedoms.

I hear the argument of "if only software X was open source, then I could fix this bug here or add this feature there". I'm right there with you on code that is in the mainline and lives inside the source, but if I'm writing a plugin, that's my work and I own that, not you.

If I choose to make use of a proprietary library because it makes sense to me, like for example CAD solvers where the FOSS alternatives aren't there yet, that's my decision for my plugin. All your GPL license does is infect my work.

That's why I don't use GPL, and why I agree with others that the end result of many GPL licenses is to simply reduce the overall amount of GPL code in the world, as people avoid it out of concern of risk.

> I believe everyone should be given their own freedoms.

Absolute freedom does not exist (or even make sense).

> The plugin boundary should be exactly that, a boundary between the primary app and any created plugins. Why do you feel entitled to force a license decision on a third party's work?

That's the expectation I set when I develop the host software. If I was fine with third party proprietary plug-ins I could set my plug-in headers as MIT or something. Just like if I only wanted my software be used by people who have no revenue or live in $COUNTRY I would put that as a license instead of the GPL.

> Yeah, my work might not function without your code, but your code is your code and my plugin is mine.

this is super super entitled. You're fine with leveraging GPL work which is release for free for your own benefit, but do not want to reciprocate. As I posted elsewhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule ; this is the most basic expectation one can have.

> but your code is your code and my plugin is mine.

but the GPL code is and will forever be freely available ; anything that goes against increasing the pool of freely available thing is a no-go. The end goal of all that would be to change laws so that ownership of ideas, patents, etc..., is itself ended ; ultimately, licenses and copyright shouldn't even need to exist.

> If I choose to make use of a proprietary library because it makes sense to me, like for example CAD solvers where the FOSS alternatives aren't there yet, that's my decision for my plugin. All your GPL license does is infect my work.

Again you seem to forget that your plug-in depends on an existing host software and seem to want to use the work done there without giving anything in return. If there was some kind of public standard for CAD solvers so that the GPL part of your plug-in could be also used with free solvers, that would be a non-issue - ship your plug-in, and end-users can install a free solver or a proprietary one separately if they are fine with proprietary code.

> This situation can't violated the GPL because it would imply that almost any communication with a GPLed program would violate the GPL.

any intimate communication would indeed. Any communication that goes through a standard (e.g. ISO-defined or industry standard, so not something specific to your company) would not.

Quoting the FSF:

> Using shared memory to communicate with complex data structures is pretty much equivalent to dynamic linking.

You can obviously extend "communicating complex data structures" to RPC through JSON & websockets for instance as it's this "exchange of complex data structures" which is the defining matter in what constitutes a single program from the point of view of the GPL.

> I gave specific examples and you keep using an abstract label.

I am quoting the license text.

> Communicating through complex data structures can describe files too. If you save a file from one GPLed program and open it in a non GPLed program, that is interprocess communication. If both programs are using mmap on the files instead of writes, does that change things? If files are being sent over local loop back does that change things?

I don't thinkg it would at all - it would still breach the license if e.g. you are dumping raw struct contents in your files that are only meaningful for the proprietary side of things.

See https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/8505/gpl-appl...