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See this: Freedom or Power.

Use -std=c99 instead - this will switch to ANSI C99 (aka ISO 9899) mode
(which isn't fully implemented yet...)

Sure, some people think he sounds paranoid...but he's right. It'll take time for things to get really bad...but they will get there, slowly.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Tell me what objdump -x `which $kdeapp` | grep NEEDED returns at your system. It should only return direct deps, not the whole list.

We should resist terms like "stealing" when talking about music. The word has a lot of connotation from thousands of years of usage, but it has only been possible to record music for less than two centuries. (You can see RMS's article about intellectual property for more than just the sound-bite).

Another thought, from a recent blog entry I found on Digg:

The purpose of property is to better manage the allocation of scarce resources. Since the resource is limited and not everyone can have it, property rights and property law make complete sense for a civilized society, allowing those with rights to the property to buy, sell and exchange their property. This allows for resources to be efficiently allocated through commerce and the laws of supply and demand. It's a sensible system for the best allocation of scarce resources. However, when it comes to infinite resources, there's simply no need to worry about efficient allocation -- since anyone can have a copy.

...there is a need for ability to configure a modern Linux system from scratch..

>I consider unreleased, custom code which is considered proprietary to the company owning it and not for redistribution to be nonfree.

Ah--OK, thanks for causing me to think about it some more. The following definition comes from an interesting page at gnu.org :

Private software
        Private or custom software is software developed for one user (typically an organization or company). That user keeps it and uses it, and does not release it to the public either as source code or as binaries.

        A private program is free software in a trivial sense if its unique user has full rights to it. However, in a deeper sense, it does not really make sense to pose the question of whether such a program is free software or not.

        In general we do not believe it is wrong to develop a program and not release it. There are occasions when a program is so useful that withholding it from release is treating humanity badly. However, most programs are not that marvelous, and withholding them is not particularly harmful. Thus, there is no conflict between the development of private or custom software and the principles of the free software movement.

        Nearly all employment for programmers is in development of custom software; therefore most programming jobs are, or could be, done in a way compatible with the free software movement.

Install Subversion, and use it on your config files.

However, one so-called freedom that we do not advocate is the "freedom to choose any license you want for software you write". We reject this because it is really a form of power, not a freedom.

We believe you should decide what to do with the software you use; however, that is not what today's law says. Current copyright law places us in the position of power over users of our code, whether we like it or not. The ethical response to this situation is to proclaim freedom for each user, just as the Bill of Rights was supposed to exercise government power by guaranteeing each citizen's freedoms. That is what the GNU GPL is for: it puts you in control of your usage of the software, while protecting you from others who would like to take control of your decisions.

Bottom line is that he who writes the code chooses the license. That is TRUE freedom whether apparent fascists such as yourself like it or not.

"Open Source" is about securing people's freedom...

No, "open source" is not about software freedom and it never was. The open source development methodology has to do with writing more reliable software, more quickly, and at lower cost. To understand why this misses the point the free software movement raises, consider this excerpt from "Why "Open Source" misses the point of Free Software":

"The idea of open source is that allowing users to change and redistribute the software will make it more powerful and reliable. But this is not guaranteed. Developers of proprietary software are not necessarily incompetent. Sometimes they produce a program which is powerful and reliable, even though it does not respect the users' freedom. How will free software activists and open source enthusiasts react to that?

A pure open source enthusiast, one that is not at all influenced by the ideals of free software, will say, "I am surprised you were able to make the program work so well without using our development model, but you did. How can I get a copy?" This attitude will reward schemes that take away our freedom, leading to its loss.

The free software activist will say, "Your program is very attractive, but not at the price of my freedom. So I have to do without it. Instead I will support a project to develop a free replacement." If we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and defend it."

I'm glad open source proponents use the GNU GPL and help secure software freedom for the users of those programs, I'm also glad open source proponents work together with free software activists on a variety of issues. I'm even glad that people go into depth on how to make money and license software under free software licenses (most notably: the GPL and LGPL). But these business-oriented discussions are not the most critical issues—human rights for software users and building community are more substantial issues. The open source movement was defined in part to get away from the "freedom talk" free software activists engage in, thus it's no surprise that when some people talk about "open source" they're not calling attention to freedom very much. Some open source proponents, such as Eric Raymond, want to talk about what the two groups have in common which means often talking about only the open source movement's values. The organization founded to champion open source's values, the Open Source Initiative, has considerable work to do to reframe the debate such that software freedom is an important part of that movement, assuming they want to make that a goal in the first place.

I wouldn't use C for the kind of applications you're talking about, although if I was forced to I'd look into something like the GNU Scientific Library. However, Java is a good choice for math heavy coding where you don't have the resources to do it Fortran. Arbitrary precision is possible using classes in the standard java.math package, which as the Javadoc states "provides classes for performing arbitrary-precision integer arithmetic (BigInteger) and arbitrary-precision decimal arithmetic (BigDecimal)". I'm not just saying that it's possible to do precise mathematical programming in Java, I know several people who do just that for nuclear physics projects at various academic and government institutions in and around Oxford, UK.

No, you're not buying a right to view the content, you're buying the physical disc. However, to view the film, you have to copy the film from that disc into your computer/DVD player, and it is this act of copying which is subject to the EULA. That's the difference between a book and a DVD - you don't have to photocopy the book in order to read it.

RMS's essay The Right to Read is based around reading an eBook for this reason.

Does this mean that Richard Stallman trying to shove "GNU/Linux" down people's throats is really a misappropriation of a trademark?

1. In 1983 Richard Stallman initiates the GNU project. That's the project to create a fully Free Software operating system.
2. 8 years later, in 1991, Linus Torvalds first announces a kernel that works with GNU software, and later on releases the very first release of his kernel for an i386 computer to work with the GNU operating system
3. The addition of Linux to the GNU operating system results in the GNU/Linux variant, which is the GNU system running with the kernel called Linux

Does this mean that Richard Stallman trying to shove "GNU/Linux" down people's throats is really a misappropriation of a trademark?

1. In 1983 Richard Stallman initiates the GNU project. That's the project to create a fully Free Software operating system.
2. 8 years later, in 1991, Linus Torvalds first announces a kernel that works with GNU software, and later on releases the very first release of his kernel for an i386 computer to work with the GNU operating system
3. The addition of Linux to the GNU operating system results in the GNU/Linux variant, which is the GNU system running with the kernel called Linux

...and what DRM is for.

Its sole purpose is to keep you from using the media you would otherwise have rightful access to in any way other than what the copyright holder explicitly wants.

In short, its sole purpose is, ultimately, to make you pay every time you make use of the media, and to control the flow of information.

DRM is how the media megacorporations intend to rein in the internet. For instance, you can't prove that the media broadcast a story when the story can't be recorded.

DRM is how the big corporations intend to remove your right to read.

This is just the first shot across the bow. It's going to get worse. A lot worse. Read all you can about "trusted computing" to see where this is going. All they have to do is to remove your ability to boot an unsigned bootloader, and the game is over (with you as the loser).

If you think this is paranoid ranting, well, so did people who thought habeus corpus would never be removed. That doesn't make what I say right, but since the same people are ultimately involved, you shouldn't dismiss the above as paranoid ranting on the basis of incredulity alone.

Patents and Copyright are significantly different, and lumping them together as "intellectual property" is more likely to confuse than enlighten. Getting people to lump unlike things together is an excellent way to confuse multiple issues and usually results in incorrect conclusions.

The simple version is this: Copyright are promoted as an incentive for artists to make art, while patents are intended to make engineering research extremely profitable. They're both economic incentives intended to promote social good, but the cost/benefit tradeoffs are massively different in the two cases. RMS makes an excellent more detailed argument, if you're willing to listen to him.

Guiding from where to the world of Internet Protocol? What had they been using? IPX? NetBEUI?

(The other IP is a fiction, unsupported by statute. Copyrights exist. Patents exist. "IP" does not.)

no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind

I agree entirely, there is no good reason to put physical limitations on ideas and doing so degrades them. Good ideas can be immortal, a story is retold, a song is sung, inventions are shared and implemented long after the death of the person who conceived the original. As one candle lights another, ideas flow between people and enrich all. A society that would put unreasonable restrictions on these things will extinguish them. The ultimate reward for any author is recognition and imitation.

Perpetual copyrights will be used to crush people with new stories, songs and ideas. "What is yours next to our collection, which [contains tens of thousands | spans the entire history of recorded music | includes the work of Einstein]?" they can ask before dismissing you. Every day we come closer to losing the right to read.

No, it's too late already. The GPLv2 explicitly grants the right to redistribute the software under GPLv2 or ANY LATER VERSION. If any coupons have already been handed out, then Microsoft has effectively distributed GPLv3 software and the game is over.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

I'm fascinated by your use of the term "problem children". Most companies want sheep who will do as they are told unconditionally, and be content with what the company gives them.. Because some "geeks" want to make a stand for something they believe in, they are "problem children" who should not be hired. In the old days, you tried not to hire outsiders or "Educated people" to work at the mill, because they would try to organize a union or something like that. Now Unions are being done-away with via trade and immigration (In particular the exploitation of Immigrant labor). The "Right to read" http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html is eventually going away, along with a lot of our other freedoms.

Next you wont be able to graduate unless you pay your unpaid DMCA notices.

Most schools require a zero balance to graduate.

Being denied net access is one of the principle wrongs of the right to read story. Even today, that is fatal. Witout network access, you can't register for classes. If Stanford has special policies for computers within their network which they deny to computers outside their network all of those services are denied for those "disconnected".

"Illegally using Internet Protocol"?

Oh, you meant "intellectual property". This term tends to confuse the issue; one should instead use "copyright", "patent", "trademark", or "trade secret" as appropriate. In this case, the law considers your personal information a trade secret between you and the business, subject to non-disclosure agreements called "privacy policies". I haven't read the bill, but from the summaries I have read, the bill appears to cover copyrights, not trade secrets.

If you'd actually read the article you linked to, you would realize that the quote in question (about charging money for software being a crime against humanity) was not in fact said by Richard Stallman, but only attributed to him by someone else. There's nothing new here: people are constantly trying to claim that the GPL is somehow anti-profit. But the GPL has never been about restricting anyone's ability to profit: in fact, consider the following statement, from the GPL itself (emphasis added):

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

People who claim that the GPL explicitly forbids making a profit from selling software or that Stallman himself is against the sale of software are either deeply confused or dishonest. In fact, in the early years of the FSF, the foundation was primarily supported by the sale of its own, GPL-licensed software. In those days, the internet was still slow, unstable, and inaccessible to commercial interests, many of whom nonetheless ran UNIX systems and desired GNU tools. These were sold, on floppy disks by snail mail, to people who were interested. Yes, for a fee.

"Yes," says the businessman, "I understand that -- but the GPL effectively drives the profit from selling software to zero, even if it doesn't explicitly prevent me from selling said software, because the person I sell it to can turn around and distribute it to his friends for free, a right the GPL guarantees!"

He's right, in a certain sense. However, anyone with a cursory understanding of economics and the free market knows that healthy markets also serve to drive profits to zero -- that's how you know the market is functioning properly. Margins will decrease with competition by definition, and prices will drop until all that is being covered by price is operational cost. This is considered good for the consumer; it means that businesses are forced to innovate and develop new markets, because when a sector becomes saturated, profits will by definition lower until the margins are so thin that companies previously providing the service will no longer be interested in providing them; this reduces competition, prices rise, margins widen, providing incentive to other companies to re-enter the field and make a profit -- and so the cycle begins anew. Clearly, in a properly functioning market with low barriers to entry, margins will oscillate very close to zero. This is how it is supposed to work. You don't have the right to make a profit, not in capitalism.

The case with the GPL is analogous -- the freedoms it guarantees the user reduce artificial barriers to entry and make competition very easy. For example, had I decided to sell GNU software in the 1980s -- ie, compete with the FSF, who was making a tidy profit this way -- I could have. I would have figured out how much it cost to distribute the software, and made my price lower than theirs by reducing my own profit margins, thus stealing their business. They could then have undercut me, or perhaps a third party could have undercut us both, and so on and so forth, until there was nothing left to undercut, and the price of selling the GPL'd software was exactly equal to the cost of distributing it. I probably wouldn't see this as ideal, and I'd probably stop selling GNU software. Competition would ease. Prices would rise. Business people call this an arbitrage opportunity: a product is overvalued, so you sell it for less to bring prices down, until the opportunity vanishes and there's no more profit.

The catch is, with the internet, distribution costs are nearly -- although not exactly -- zero.

Clearly, there's not much money to be made selling Free Software, although you'r

Free Software has never been about ethics

On the contrary, Free Software has always been about ethics.

From the GNU Manifesto:

"Why I Must Write GNU: I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way.I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it."

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html

Perhaps more significant is that it is GPL incompatible. Also, see the Mozilla Relicensing FAQ for details about their decision to triple license (MPL/GPL/LGPL), rather than modifying the MPL, to make Mozilla source compatible with the GPL.

AFAICT, the MPL is not a bad license, other than its GPL incompatibility.

One thing people seem to forget is the GNU userspace is still being developed. If people cared, you'd find out that GNU sed and has new options to help people write better scripts. All the basic userspace commands we use in Linux (most of the GNU ones) are still being developed and enhanced.

I doubt many people even know about ftp://alpha.gnu.org where some of the REAL snapshots of the GNU userspace live (not all of them).

Thats why the GNU userspace is popular. Its not stagnating.

I remember using Solaris userspace commands, I prefer the GNU userspace.

As I said, I need to specify these as arguments to configure when I build anything that depends on libfoo, but that's not a major problem.

if [ "$PACKAGE_NAME" = "foo" ]; then
  with-stuff
  enable-stuff
fi

Or change them all to a note saying "sorry, but the real documentation is in another castle"

What happens when you do something you enjoy over and over again? You stop enjoying it. You need to learn to separate your hobbies from your skills. Well, I guess it's a bit too late for that.

Actually I would say more specifically, when you do what you love because you NEED to for that reward of money which you require to survive, you start to see what you onced loved stressful work that you start to dread and eventually get sick of.
When you do things for the pure sake of doing it, it's easier to love. That's why a lot of people like to keep their hobbies "pure".

See: Creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if task is done for gain

GPL does not make clear what constitutes distribution.

FAQ does.

Sun is releasing the Java libraries under the GPLv2. The article never really explicitly makes that clear, but given that they're talking about the Java2D library it should be deadly obvious that they're releasing the entire J2SE library under the GPLv2.

If anyone bothered to read the GNU philosophy section, you'd see that RMS has long had great essays on how the GPL derives its legal authority from copyright law, but its moral authority from the fact that, if you violate the GPL, you're trampling peoples' freedom.

Alas, I can't remember which of the articles it is on the GNU philosophy page, but it clearly covers this exact ground.

So yes, I realize that the GPL uses copyright law and that weakening copyright law will weaken the legal underpinnings of the GPL. But it will also make them less necessary and it will never weaken the moral underpinnings of the GPL—no change in law could ever do that.

In other words, yes Virginia, you can use copyright as a means to a better end, while simultaneously advocating copyright reform that would make the laws the GPL relies upon (or even the GPL itself) unnecessary! After all, just what need would any of us have to add the GPL to our works if, for example, the law required that all software be distributed with GPL-like permissions to begin with (this is just an example; there are better ways to reform copyright law)? You'd be moving the language guaranteeing the four fundamental freedoms from the GPL into some neocopyright law.

Now, I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen, but I still intend to work towards copyright reform wherein the scope and duration of copyright are reduced to something more livable, so that you can't go around terrifying grandmothers and small children with the specter of copyright infringement lawsuits, even if they don't own a computer and are clearly innocent.

But in the mean time, don't be surprised if I hold the current copyright regime in contempt. The GPL is forced to use it as a means to an end, but I believe that we'd be better off destroying the current system and building something which accomplishes the same end by a better means than our current laws.

Wouldn't free software that implements CableCARD have the ability to leak the plaintext signal? This is why CableLabs requires DRM in all PC implementations of CableCARD systems.

And what about set-top video game consoles? PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii use a lockout chip business model. Most people aren't willing to buy a 27" PC monitor or a second PC for the TV room so that they can fit four players around one PC to play a multiplayer PC game, even if it could be the next Bomberman or Smash Bros.

Your analogy breaks because DRM is protected by law (17 USC 1201 and foreign counterparts), but blue user interfaces are not. To put these on an even footing, imagine that blue user interfaces were subject to a design patent. In such a case, if there were a strong demand for blue user interfaces, then the inability to implement design-patented interfaces would be a weakness of free software.

Psychology is a constantly changing field, but there have been some very good studies that suggest that being rewarded for an action can reduce intrinsic motivation to perform it. The GNU project has a short but good page on this, as it relates to open source. There's also an old (but good) article introducing this effect here.

This, of course, could be found out to be wrong, but it seems like a very dangerous thing if it is right, and it might partially explain why people who are paid to program often no longer want to do it as a hobby - even if what they are paid to do is boring and radically different from what their hobby programming might be.

You miss the obvious. One of the basic tenents of GPL is that you get access to source code. That is why the original article picked on the GPL so much as requiring copyright. It says as much right on the front page of http://gnu.org/:

"The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this."

Being able to hack binary blobs is better than nothing, but having the source makes a world of difference.

I'm just waiting for the "ed" exploit: http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.html

You should reread the article with the following requirement for free software in mind:

"The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this."

Without copyright, the GPL cannot enforce this. In response to this, some posters have said that instead of copyright, there should be a law requiring source code be distributed with binary code. How's that for "freedom"?

Sometimes, open-source / Free software does get created out of boredom. Here's an example from my personal experience:

1999-2000, I wrote GNU Robots. Was it my long-time passion to write a program that simulated a little robot wandering around a large room? No, I did it because I needed to have something to do. My employer had just announced that we would be shutting down the company, so all projects were cancelled, and we were in a "keep the lights on" mode until we transitioned off our customers throughout the next year. The CEO asked us to cease all projects. Suddenly, I had nothing to do during the day except mark time. For the first 3-4 months, it was great - I finally got to do all the backoffice "cleanup" projects that I never had time to do. After that, I sat on my hands.

Until I realized I could write a game, and look like I was doing work. So I started work on a simulator where I could program a little robot, and see how many prizes he could pick up before he ran out of energy. Eventually, it became GNU Robots.

-jh

• Copyright term extensions have been extended by an order of magnitude from the 14-year term established by the Statute of Anne.
• In many industries, the standard of production is so high that it takes dozens of people to create a work. Therefore, most works in these industries fall under the "work made for hire" rule, where the publisher is deemed the author.

You don't read slashdot much, do you?

Just read enough slashdot and you'll run into enough people ranting and raving about how any form of IP is _fundamentally_ an abhomination, including not only patents and copyright, but also _trademarks_. Even if _some_ don't outright spell out "abolish copyright", they go at such great lengths about how it's fundamentally an oppressive evil, a major violation of your constitutional rights, _and_ a plot to plunder the economy of poorer countries... that, really, it's hard to see what other solution than abolishment would the author see there.

The MPAA and RIAA threads have been mentioned, so I'll add I've also run into them in topics about MS, BSA, piracy in China, etc. Really, just read enough of those and it's impossible to not run into the "abolish copyright" rants. Some even modded +5.

And then there are the clever guys who think they're all stealthy and subtle if they pack it as "fair use", "civil rights", etc. Add a bit of "information wants to be free", "copying != theft", "you can't stop the flow of information", etc, rhetoric. Most of them ammount to nothing more and nothing less than effectively abolishing copyright, if they had their way.

Get this: "copy right" is about who has the right to make copies. That was the original idea that the law was supposed to embody. The moment you've extended "fair use" to mean that anyone can make any number of copies, sell them in their shop, do anything to them, incorporate them in their own products without giving credit, set their own terms, etc, well, you effectively abolished any copyright protection. Effectively in that kind of world, even if you could still put "(C) Nefarity, 2007" on your work, it would have exactly zero use or meaning, so it's as good as abolished.

It's a bit, if you will, like having private property without having the right to lock your door, put any limits on who may enter your house, and can't stop them from leaving with your TV or selling tickets to watch the latest movie on your DVD player. I'm sure some could equally argue that distributing someone _else_'s TV is just a way of helping the neighbour, makes a better community, and indeed is as fundamental as the freedom of speech. (After all, it's exactly what "freedom 2" is in the Free Software Definition.) Anyway, the point I'm trying to make: at that point you effectively _don't_ have private property any more. If there are no legal limits you can actually enforce, then you just don't have it.

Same here. Copyright is all about private property of information. Whether that's good or bad, you decide, I'm not going into tha The moment you've removed all legal protections, and you can't tell people what they can do with your bits, and who can do it, you effectively don't have copyright any more.

WTF? There has never been a Perl interpreter in Emacs (only Elisp), and Project GNU predates Perl 1.000 by three years.

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-history.html
http://history.perl.org/PerlTimeline.html#1980s

I take my information in part from What is Copyleft?. Which writings gave you a different impression?

Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation devised, in addition to some marvelous software, the GNU General Public License (GPL for short). Or the CopyLeft it is sometimes called.

It is quite a revolutionary document, using the "copyright" tool to to protect your right to use free software.

Unfortunately using copyright to protect free software is a lot like using a Jackal to guard the hens.

In fact, various inconveniences relating to this have resulted in modifications such as the LGPL (Library General Public License) and more recently the NPL (Netscape Public License)

I call these matters mere inconveniences, the real damage will occur when the Jackal's, (sorry, I mean lawyers), actually get to test the GPL in court for the first time.

Thus enter my version.

Its very simple.

Entirely consistent.

Completely unrestrictive.

Easy to apply.

The "No problem Bugroff" license is as follows...

The answer to any and every question relating to the copyright, patents, legal issues of Bugroff licensed software is....

Sure, No problem. Don't worry, be happy. Now bugger off.

All portions of this license are important..

• "Sure, no problem." Gives you complete freedom. I mean it. Utterly complete. A bit of a joke really. You have complete freedom anyway.
• "Don't worry, be happy." Apart from being good advice and a good song, it also says :- No matter what anyone else says or does, you still have complete freedom.
• Now bugger off. The only way to get rid of pushy Jackals is to ignore them and not feed them. The GPL is just begging somebody to take it to court. Can't you just see it. Exactly the same thing that happened when some twit (not Linus) registered Linux as his own personal trademark. People got upset, started a fund, and hired, off all ruddy things, a Jackal to try and defend the chicken! Who really benefits from this trademark / patent / copyright thing anyway? The lawyers. Who made it up in the first place? The lawyers.

OK so the last part of the license sounds a bit harsh, but seriously folks, if you are a :-

• Lawyer asking these legalese questions... You should go off and learn an honest trade that will actually contribute to life instead of draining it.
• Programmer asking these legalese questions... You have amazingly powerful tools in your hands and mind, use them to ask and answer the worthwhile questions of life, the universe and everything. Stop mucking about with such legal nonsense and get back to programming.
• User/reader asking these question... Don't worry. Go off and be happy. Have fun. Enjoy what has been created for you.

If you write a book that is similar enough to,...Da Vinci Code, you will get sued for copyright infringement, even if the words are not identical.

Are you not aware that the author of Da Vinci Code easily triumphed in court? He won specifically because copyrights do not cover ideas. Conflating copyrights with patents is doublethink

If you visit the gnu.org philosophy pages, you find hatred of copyright from consist moral principles. The idea is that keeping people from copying things that are easy to copy is morally wrong:

When software owners tell us that helping our neighbors in a natural way is piracy, they pollute our society's civic spirit.

This is the original spirit of the GPL, which was used copyright laws to assure freedoms that some copyright owners want to abolish.

Not much has changed. The GPL has been extended to fight new menaces, like DRM and patents, which strip you of your freedoms even if you have free software, source code and all the requirements of GPL2. Despite this extension, the GPL would not be required if it were not for copyright laws. Without the DMCA, you could freely modify Tivo and make it your own again and there would be no problems. The proponents of copyright have made new abominable laws to deny your freedoms, this has not made the old abominable laws right or necessary.

If your intention is to assure users their freedom, you will use the GPL. That won't make you a friend of copyright, it will make you an advocate of freedom.

How important is "the anti-copyright crowd" that the blogger writes about? It certainly has nothing to do with the FSF. Far more enlightening than the blog post is anything RMS has ever written. On copyright, read one of RMS's best writings, "Misinterpreting Copyright":

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copy right.html , or
as found in http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf , or
as printed in his book _Free Software, Free Society_