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RMS & FSF Directors To Meet With FSF Members
Free Software Foundation writes "Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, Bradley Kuhn, and the rest of the FSF leadership are hosting a rare FSF members meeting in Cambridge, MA on March 27, where they will tackle topics including, 'The Dangers of Software Patents', SCO, 'Free Software in a Global Economy', and 'The State of the Foundation'. FSF members will have ample opportunity to gripe, praise, dialog, network, and eat."
The GPL doesn't force anyone to do anything.
Which is the ONLY reason I continue to use GPL software. Otherwise I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. If RMS ever gets his way and convinces governments to enact a software tax to support the Free Software Foundation, I'll drop every piece of software with a 'g' prefix like it was a poisonous snake.
The GPL is as libertarian as any other contract freely entered into by informed sentient beings.
The analogy I like to use is: BSD == anarcho-capitalist; GPL == anarcho-socialist. The FSF wants Marx-style socialism/communism, but only through purely voluntary means. (that is until RMS gets his way with the software tax...)
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I can't even begin to imagine how many man-hours have been blown obsessing about, discussing, worrying, or protesting SCO's latest actions. It really is appalling.
The amount of time a bunch of noisy slashbots spend sputtering in fury about SCO really doesn't have that much impact. In fact, if it keeps them flaming one another on slashdot, and out of the way of the developers on their mailing lists, so much better.
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We are referring to a very specific definition of Freedom... the "Free as in speech" kind of freedom, not the "free as in beer" kind of freedom. To avoid the confusion which results from operator overloading, henceforth we will use the word "libre" for "free as in speech" and "gratis" to describe "free as in beer".
I stand by my definition: at the most basic level, freedom is the absence of restrictions of some form or another. Libre refers to the lack of a specific class of restrictions -- restrictions on behavior. Everything you mention is this type of restriction: bugs restrict what people can accomplish with the software; platform dependence restricts what computers people can use to run the software; internationalization (or the lack thereof) restricts who can understand the software. And so forth.
Gratis is irrelevant to this converation, although ultimately it too is a subset of libre -- attaching a financial cost to software is indeed yet another type of restriction.
I put my spoon on the windowsill and told it that it was free. Amazingly, it failed to walk away, hump the neighbor's fork, register to vote, start picketing for silverware rights, or exhibit any other behavior typically demonstratred by a free entity. Show me how a spoon can be free, in any sense of the word other than gratis, that is unrelated to it's use by a living creature. If you can demonstrate that a spoon can have freedom, then I'll accept that other inanimate objects can too.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
The GPL means I OWN MY CODE, and you cannot use it for your own closed-source unless you talk to me and pay me for the right to use it.
It is as far from socalist as you can get and still see the code. The BSD license is "socalist" if you want, though really the people who release that are doing it because they want to, not because the government is telling them to.
But the GPL is applied for strictly selfish and greedy reasons and would may Ayn Rand quite happy.
The real "Socialists" and "Communists" are the people like you who whine "I can't use your code in my closed-source program unless I pay you. Wahh!!!! Unfair!!!! Gimme, gimme, gimme!" Tough luck, jerk. That's called capitalism and selfish greed on my part. Live with it, but don't you dare call me a Communist for wanting to control something I WROTE!