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Why I Love The GPL
Roblimo writes "'There are a lot of good reasons to like the GPL: the GNU Public License. For one thing, it's a David and Goliath kind of thing. It's the little guy standing up to the corporate behemoths that run rough-shod over our daily lives by virtue of their influence, legal and otherwise, on government. For another, it's virtuous.' These are the opening words to a NewsForge article praising the GPL by Joe Barr. Now and then we forget how much of the software we use and love is made possible by the General Public License. Thanks for reminding us, Joe. (NewsForge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.)"
Definitely an improvement over the old days where you had to buy every little utility.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
"Thanks for reminding us, Joe. (NewsForge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.)""
Nope. No corporate behemoths here.
from the when-you-have-nothing-new-to-say-but-like-to-hear- yourself-talk-anyway dept.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The GPL is great for the obvious reasons, but there is also the culture change that came with it. IMHO, the area the GPL influence most was the culture, enabling free software to truly be free.
This sig sucks.
I like it because when Bruce Perens created the GPL back in the late 70s for Sun, he was considering the average home user who may have needed to compile his latest application.
Back then applications were published in computer magazines such as Omni, Compute and of course Scientic American. These were usually in hundreds lines of code in length and principally written in Assembler.
There's not a week that goes by when I think of Mr Perens and his contributions with the GPL and the neural networks which lead to the discovery of the Internet.
Which is nice.
If they could have taken X proprietary, there would be neither XF86 nor X.org. Users have the freedom to choose commercial implementations, supported by folks who actually get paid for the software, or freely available implementations, supported by unpaid volunteers, based on their own needs, not some zealot's utopian politics.
This is the ultimate freedom.
The FSF would remove people's freedom to choose commercial implementations, and claim that they're fighting for freedom. This is the same kind of logical error as "fucking for virginity".
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
There is an old joke, with many variations around the 'net, that goes something like this:
One day, Mega Corp.'s mainframe stops working. As it's an old system that's been running for years, their own support staff are at a loss about how to fix it, so they call a consultant who used to work for them when the system was first set up.
The consultant comes in and looks around the system for a minute. Then he takes out a piece of chalk and draws a big X on one of the boards. "That's your problem, right there," he tells them. "Replace that board and everything will be fixed. That'll be $100,000, please."
Stunned that anyone could ask so much money for a minute's work, the senior support guy asks for an invoice. "Sure," says the consultant, and he writes down the following:
Sometimes the last step really is worth more than everything that went before it, and being able to take it is a valuable thing.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.