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Freedom or Power?
mpawlo writes: "As reported by Gnuheter, a new essay published by Bradley M. Kuhn and Richard M. Stallman carries the title "Freedom or Power?". The authors state something that we might have suspected from essays from Kuhn and Stallman before, but now is a little more clear, if still ambiguous: "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." The essay is interesting in the light of an earlier essay published by Eric S Raymond. ... Tim O'Reilly started the debate with his weblog of July 28, 2001: My definition of freedom zero."
Ed. note - FWIW, Stallman and Kuhn are right. Not necessarily in their advocacy of the GPL, but certainly in their description of whether licensing is freedom for the developer or power over others. All licensing stems from copyright law, a completely man-made creation whose sole purpose is to give the writer of creative works artificial power over what others do with those works. If you take the canonical description of freedom ("Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins") and apply it to software, it's pretty clear that true freedom would not let one person control what another does with software.
after having read this essay, the author strikes me as a person who would order a sandwich for lunch without lettuce, gets a sandwich with lettuce, would proceed to eat it, then demand not to be charged for the sandwich, as he did not order lettuce on it.
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Fuck you, motherfucker. Fuck yous to: Rob "Taco-Snotter" Malda, Homos, Kowboi Kneel, and RMS.
I can't be thrown in jail for murdering a bus full of kids.
It depends on how you murder the bus. If you put the bus inside a compactor then yes, the kids will die and you should go to jail. If you just climb on the bus, hit the floor with your fists a dozen times, and proclaim "the bus is dead now", you will hardly be thrown in jail for making the kids laugh.
Yeah, right. Remember when the whole ESR thing kicked off, and everyone was dead worried about forking?
Well that's the problem with what you're saying. Sure I could buy a license for some source, but at that point I'm effectively forking that source.
If you think writers of proprietary software don't want to release changes they make to (say) LGPL'd source... You're dead wrong.
But who are you trying to kid? You think I'm gonna buy a non-GPL license to some source, and continue to get the benefit of other peoples' changes? Even if I contribute my own changes?
You must think I was born yesterday!!!
I read the article... And I think Stallman is really losing it. I remember, when I was at Uni some ten years ago, I was into emacs and all the rest. But he needs to chill out. Seriously.
No power to choose a license? Umm unless your initials are RMS? Muahahaha!!!
One license to bind them all!!!
Fuck you, Mr. Stallman.
A software license is simply a contract. If the contract says, "in exchange for the use of this software, I agree not to give copies of it away" or whatever, that's not fundamentally different from a contract that says, "in exchange for the use of this software and source code, I agree to publish any changes I make to it".
In no case are you coerced into agreeing to a software license (and if you were, then the crime against freedom would be the coercion, not the license). If RMS says he's opposed to the freedom to choose a "restrictive" license (as if the GPL weren't restrictive...), then what he means to say is that he's opposed to unlimited freedom of contract.
I won't even expound on my personal feelings on the matter, I just think RMS should say what he means.