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Why I Love The GPL

Posted by michael on from the when-you-care-enough-to-send-the-very-best dept.

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.)"

4 of 488 comments (clear)

  1. cool by j3richo · · Score: 0, Troll

    it's alright I guess.

  2. Re:Lies and FUD. by vettemph · · Score: 0, Troll

    >> Just because someone can make a closed source "DNS server...

    Thanks for pointing out the problem. The BSD one way street allows CorpX to copy code and compete with BSDx. Yet BSDx can't copy code back from CorpX. BSD Is not mutual and not fair to the BSD programmer even if he is a closet microsoft fan *cough*. With the GPL you shall give back to the community which you take from. Only the greed driven corporations will try to convince the gulible that the BSD and CDDL licenses are OK. If they want to live in the proprietary world they need to stay in the proprietary world. No ONE-WAY leeches here!

    --
    The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
  3. Re:Trollo-meter: off. the. charts. by Canberra+Bob · · Score: 0, Troll

    All IBM proves is that IBM wanted to become a service provider as opposed to a software vendor in the small to medium server space. They did not embrace Linux because IBM loves teh GPL!!1! If IBM embrace teh GPL and teh free software as teh way of the future!!11!! (death to commercial software lolroromgomglol) then why isnt Websphere, DB2 or AIX GPL'ed? At least Sun is trying to GPL Solaris.

    There is a capitalist business case for being a service / solutions provider and not having to code your own OS but where is the tons of GPL'ed software that IBM created in-house just to release under the GPL?

  4. Re:Simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll


    Actually what pisses us off is the "Free" as in "Free Speech" terminology used again and again on sites like slashdot.

    GPL is one of the least free licenses I know.

    Too many programmers mistakenly put their shit under GPL because they *think* its oooh so noble and Free.