I've been trying to figure out for months now what people mean by "GPL compatibility". I've finally figured it out. A license is compatible if it can be CONVERTED into the GPL. Thus, BSD and X licenses are are compatible, because they have no clause forbidding an alteration to the license. QPL is not compatible because you are not allowed to alter it.
You have a BSD application. It statically links to a GPL (not LGPL) library. The instant you distribute it, you no longer have a BSD app, it has legally morphed into a GPL app.
But it's a one way street. The GPL specifically forbids altering it's license. If it's good enough for the GPL, why can't other licenses do the same? Or is there only room enough in the free world for one free license?
The QPL, MPL, etc., shouldn't be made GNU compatible. Instead, the GPL should be the one bending a little and specifically allowing linking to other licenses. Why the hell should QPL be the one forced into compatibility? I think it's time for the GPL to be compatible with every other license.
"My experience is that medical software is somewhat higher quality than non-medical commercial software, but not as good as the best open source software."
That's an interesting statement, considering that there are not any open source medical applications, yet.
It also assumes that medical software will have the same pool of millions of developers and users to fix and correct the software. This is not the case. It's entirely possible that a given company may already be employing a full third of the available qualified developers for that application!
Okay, here's the code for the new $5,000,000 BioTronics9000. Are you going to download and use it? Can you even understand what the code is doing? Are you even interested?
The code in closed source medical software is but through a GREAT deal of scrutiny. In a lot of cases, the FDA reviews the code line of line. Even if they don't, they do demand detailed design and spec documents, thorough testing records, proofs of correctness, etc. And the European equivalents of the FDA are even stricter.
If this software were the type that you could take and run on any equivalent medical device, then it would be a much better candidate for open sourcing. However, the software is always an integral part of the hardware. One will not work without the other. Asking a medical equipment company to publish its source code would be equivalent to asking them to publish detailed blueprints for their hardware.
You talked about a "standards body". We already have one in the US. They're the FDA. If you wish to privatize the FDA, I'm with you 100%.
The systems themselves use various RTOS's (which I'm not sure policy let's me mention). However, ouside of the devices themselves, we use everything from Solaris to NT to BSD to Linux. We have used off the shelf testing software, but ended up with our own custom system based on Perl.
The software testing department in the medical equipment company where I work can halt the shipment of systems. As one of those testers, I can pull the plug (pardon the pun) at any time. I might have to explain myself, but they can't go over my head without a full hearing.
Medical software developers get sued constantly. If a patient dies because the software controlling the MRI is faulty, that manufacturer will probably wind up out of business. I work in the medical hardware/software industry. We haven't been sued yet, but some of our competitors have. And we are always disheartened when it happens. Our latest product was released to manufacturing after one and a half YEARS of software testing. We fear that there might still be an undiscovered bug that could lead to a patient dying.
Whether or not medical software is open or closed doesn't matter to much. What does matter is that it works 100%. The anesthesiologist doesn't care if it's Morally Superior(tm) Free Software, or Evil Capitalistic Proprietary Software, just as long as the decisions it makes won't kill his patient.
I work in the Medical Hardware/Software industry. When the FDA discovers a bug in the software, you MUST fix it. You don't have the luxury of hoping some other hacker might figure out a solution. You don't have the luxury of pondering what to do. You WILL fix it, and you WILL fix it by a certain date, or your software will no longer be used.
The FDA doesn't care if your license announces the lack of warranty. Neither does the anesthesiologist. Neither does the patient. It will be demonstrated to work right the first time it is used in a clinical setting, or it won't be used at all.
Because of these "rules", some Open Source project models won't work at all with medical software, and the typical "release it as GPL and post it on the net" is one of them. However, something similar to Apache's "gather a group of experts and limit membership" model would work. The FSF be damned when it comes to a patient's life! I don't want medical software to be "free"! I want the software under the developer's shackles and chains! I only want experts working on it. I don't want something that's Joe Schmoe's weekend hobby. If the developer needs to use a proprietary libary, I want him to have a license that lets him do it. Ditto for air traffic control software.
I'm sure that there's a Free Software development model that will work for such projects. And I am sure that there will be several such project. However, no proprietary closed source software that saves people's lives will ever be Evil in my book, ever.
Some will abandon Linux because it's mainstream. How many will do this? I have no clue. But there will be another group who will abandon Linux shortly for an entirely different reason: politics.
When GNU finally releases a semi-stable Hurd, a major exodus will occur. There are too many AC's ill-contented with running GNU/Linux. They want GNU/GNU. They want politically correct software created by politically correct people. They don't want a kernel that includes an obnoxious clause allowing non-GPL modules. Just as some BSD-freaks carefully excise any trace of GNU from their systems, these new Hurdites will excise all remnants of GNUless code from their boxen. If you thought the holy wars of the past were bloody, you haven't seen anything until you've seen the disciples recieve their book of Revelations.
Just so that I'm not misunderstood, these are not the same people as the Hurd developers.
Here he goes again! For someone who claimed he's on the verge of joining the libertarians, Katz doesn't have clue as to what liberty even means.
If the government were passing laws telling who theaters could and could not admit, then he would have a valid point. But theaters are privately owned businesses. If they don't want to admit children to certain movies, then that is their business. Freedom is not about one group of people telling another group how to conduct their day-to-day affairs.
If you feel so strongly about this, why don't you just go open up your own theatre? It's certainly much more productive than whining.
I was using GNU tools years before the Linux kernel was even started. I was grateful for them then, and I'm grateful for them now. But at some point I'm going to have to stop fawning over the superhuman greatness that is Richard Stallman and get on with my own life.
Modern physics would be nothing yet for the tireless work of last century's physicists. Does this mean I have to refer to Newtonian/Einsteinian physics? My computer would be nothing without it's motherboard, so do I have to refer to it as my FEC/AMD?
The whole of this operating system is greater than the sum of it's parts. The GNU project laid down some logs, as did X and BSD, then Linus Torvalds came along with a spark and the whole thing became a bonfire. So do we call it "log"? Sure, "spark" isn't an accurate word either, but neither is "log/spark".
However much Richard may want it otherwise, the movement is not his.
For the record, Linus Torvalds and Eric Raymond ARE VERY GRATEFUL to Richard Stallman. But you don't have to abandon all of your religious, political and philosophical beliefs just to say "thank you", and you don't have to continually kiss someone's feet to show gratitude.
Re:KImageShop as well...
on
Some KDE news
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· Score: 1
I don't know if it will be finished and out of beta in time for KDE 2.0, but the KImageShop (KImage's big brother) is coming along. It will be a full image processing program. It uses OpenParts and Corba for additional filters, plugins, tools, etc. It will even use native GIMP plugins!
Okay, I'm not reading the comments on this, there's just to many to go through. So I hope this hasn't been hashed to death already.
Katz went and mentioned libertarianism, then derides private business owners for setting rules for their own establishments. What gives?
Sure, governments are talking about regulating the theatre business, and in some locales, already are. But this wasn't the main point of the article. Rather, it bemoaned the fact the theatre owners were setting rules for their businesses.
If it becomes an established premise that privately owned theatres are not allowed to set their own rules, then it's not long at all before fine restaurants have to abandon 'coat and tie' rules, hardware stores forced to sell spray paint to hoodlums, churches having to allow all to attend their sacraments, etc, etc. Hell, it wouldn't be much longer until Katz writes an article about how horrible it is that I put a "No Solicitors" sign on my door to my home!
I don't see a huge difference between the linux market and the linux community. They are mostly one and the same. There will be some people who aren't in the market, refusing to buy anything, and downloading everything. These people are rare (even 1.89$ for a distro disk counts as a purchase). Then there will be the truly clueless who buy JBuilder for Linux to run on their WinBox. Everyone else is both using Linux and buying stuff for Linux.
Yes, there are hardcore Linux users and lightweight, parttime Linux users. But they are both part of the community.
Go ahead a fire up a GNUPM. Make your own if you don't want someone else's free software. The more the merrier. Co-opt the mandrake code if you want. Embrace and extend.
But why wait until now? What was wrong with last week? Last month? Why wait until someone got half the work done for you before starting? The free software community would be better served if people helped with existing projects rather than trying to put a "G" in front of everything.
To misquote Gandalf: "Not all that's GPL is GNU. Not all that is BSD is Bad. Look for great things to happen, outside of the RedHat labs."
Those folks watching 10 hours of TV a day are the Nielson Homes. For those that don't know, Nielson does the TV ratings. Not just anybody can get a Nielson box to put on top of their set. You have to be a TV junky to get one. It's the average Nielson Home that has the TV one ten hours a day. Half of them have it on longer!
I was once part of the Nielson "family" for about a week. They kicked me out of the program since I wasn't the "typical television viewer". (Anyone who's ever studied statistics reread that last sentence:-) ) I only watched about six hours of TV a week, so it wasn't enough for them. (About as stupid as Gallop cutting their poll short when they found out I was writing in "none of the above")
Now ask yourself, if you were a TV producer, wouldn't you be interested in which shows people tuned into if they only tuned into one show? Who cares about people who change to a program just because the previous one went to a commercial break.
I no longer own a TV. I suddenly realized that I hadn't turned the thing on in six weeks, so I sold it.
"Debian is a very free and democratic distribution. If your ideas are good, they will be included."
What?! Only the Debian developers get to choose what gets included. It isn't a democracy. It's an enlightened benevolent oligarchy (one of the developers is enlightened, but he's not necessarily the one who's benevolent:-) )
If there should ever be a truly democratic distribution, I'll run in terror the opposite direction. And anyone who thinks through the consequences will do the same.
The UN doesn't have the authority to levy a tax on any nation. They can beg, plead, suggest and whine, but as it now stands, they are not a "real" government. Should they succeed in levying a tax on nations, it would open up a whole can of worms.
Re:That's the Whole Point of Free Software!
on
Storm Linux
·
· Score: 1
"Instead, they just blindely rip off all the hard work debian users have done (yes, I know they legally can, but that doesn't mean I like it any more)"
Isn't that the point of free software? So that other people can use it? If the developers desire other people to use their source code, then they'll release it as open source. If they didn't want people to modify anything without their explicit permission, they wouldn't have done so.
If you are a developer, and you get upset that other people can copy, distribute and modify your source code, then why would you do such a fscking stupid thing as releasing it under a free software license?
And if you aren't a developer, what business is it of yours if a developer allows other people to use his or her work?
"I'm willing to accept this level of tyranny for the time being."
I seem to recall Lenin saying something very similar. If you consider free software to be liberty, then think on this "Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for some security deserve neither." What is this "time being" stuff?
"Why do you use GPLed code?" Because this is not a liberty issue. Whether I use GPL or BSD or Proprietary is no different than if I use IBM's, Sun's or HP's hardware. But if my use of the software necessitates that I modify or distribute it, then I don't use GPL. Not because I think it's inferior or immoral or not free enough, but because I wish others to share my code. The GPL severly restricts the manner in which my code can be shared.
I don't think he accused RMS of that. However, you can't deny that many of Richard's followers have said nearly the same thing, just not in quite so violent of verbage.
Calling the GPL the "GPV" is just a mild form of satire. It pokes fun at exclusivity clauses in a "free license. Lighten up! Have you never mischaracterized MS as M$? Have you never called Windows as Windoze? Honestly now!
Apparently it's okay for RMS and his disciples to mistype the users of proprietary software as "slaves".
The scientific community is hardly the utopia you describe. Fierce competition exists to acquire the limited grants available. Governments are lobbied for additional funding on glorious project Alpha, and if there isn't enough tax dollars to go around, then just take it away from that frivolous project Beta. And those few institutions that get away from the competitive infighting degenerate into mutual admiration societies.
I'm not criticizing the scientific community, just trying to point out that they're no different than any other community.
Why do you have to equate nihilistic anarchy with liberty? Since you mentioned libertarianism, it's basic tenet is that one cannot deprive another of their liberty (non-initiation of force). By punching me in the nose, you have violated my fundamental rights. By disallowing force/coercion/violence, you have not diminished anyone's liberty. Nihilism is a much different thing than liberty.
Minimalistic libertarian government is of course less free than anarchy, and if human beings were angels, then anarchy would work. But BSD licenses have nothing whatsoever to do with anarchy! Neither does the GPL have anything whatsoever to do with liberty! These are licenses that grant permissions, not political rights.
You lose no freedom at all by using a BSD license. If microsoft comes along and "borrows" your code, it's still there! You have lost nothing, nada, zippo. You may be pissed because they aren't as altruistic as you are, but so what? The BSD says "I'm sharing my code with the world". The GPL says "I'm only sharing my code with those who share their code with me".
The problem with the GPL is it's "viral" nature. If I am coding with a GPL package, I must make sure that everything else I code with is GPL. If I am coding with a BSD package, I can code with everything else that is not GPL. Talk all you want about "free speech", but the BSD talks about "freedom of assembly"! Free speech means nothing if it is illegal for some people to speak.
So my predictions were off a bit. I failed to include any possibility of arguments over who has the largest penis, RMS or TC. So far I haven't seen any gun-toting threads, but libertarians were flamed nonetheless. So my predictions were pretty good.
It just goes to show that free software has progressed beyond the political party stage, it is now a bona-fide religion.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been trying to figure out for months now what people mean by "GPL compatibility". I've finally figured it out. A license is compatible if it can be CONVERTED into the GPL. Thus, BSD and X licenses are are compatible, because they have no clause forbidding an alteration to the license. QPL is not compatible because you are not allowed to alter it.
You have a BSD application. It statically links to a GPL (not LGPL) library. The instant you distribute it, you no longer have a BSD app, it has legally morphed into a GPL app.
But it's a one way street. The GPL specifically forbids altering it's license. If it's good enough for the GPL, why can't other licenses do the same? Or is there only room enough in the free world for one free license?
The QPL, MPL, etc., shouldn't be made GNU compatible. Instead, the GPL should be the one bending a little and specifically allowing linking to other licenses. Why the hell should QPL be the one forced into compatibility? I think it's time for the GPL to be compatible with every other license.
"My experience is that medical software is somewhat higher quality than non-medical commercial software, but not as good as the best open source software."
That's an interesting statement, considering that there are not any open source medical applications, yet.
It also assumes that medical software will have the same pool of millions of developers and users to fix and correct the software. This is not the case. It's entirely possible that a given company may already be employing a full third of the available qualified developers for that application!
Okay, here's the code for the new $5,000,000 BioTronics9000. Are you going to download and use it? Can you even understand what the code is doing? Are you even interested?
The code in closed source medical software is but through a GREAT deal of scrutiny. In a lot of cases, the FDA reviews the code line of line. Even if they don't, they do demand detailed design and spec documents, thorough testing records, proofs of correctness, etc. And the European equivalents of the FDA are even stricter.
If this software were the type that you could take and run on any equivalent medical device, then it would be a much better candidate for open sourcing. However, the software is always an integral part of the hardware. One will not work without the other. Asking a medical equipment company to publish its source code would be equivalent to asking them to publish detailed blueprints for their hardware.
You talked about a "standards body". We already have one in the US. They're the FDA. If you wish to privatize the FDA, I'm with you 100%.
The systems themselves use various RTOS's (which I'm not sure policy let's me mention). However, ouside of the devices themselves, we use everything from Solaris to NT to BSD to Linux. We have used off the shelf testing software, but ended up with our own custom system based on Perl.
The software testing department in the medical equipment company where I work can halt the shipment of systems. As one of those testers, I can pull the plug (pardon the pun) at any time. I might have to explain myself, but they can't go over my head without a full hearing.
Medical software developers get sued constantly. If a patient dies because the software controlling the MRI is faulty, that manufacturer will probably wind up out of business. I work in the medical hardware/software industry. We haven't been sued yet, but some of our competitors have. And we are always disheartened when it happens. Our latest product was released to manufacturing after one and a half YEARS of software testing. We fear that there might still be an undiscovered bug that could lead to a patient dying.
Whether or not medical software is open or closed doesn't matter to much. What does matter is that it works 100%. The anesthesiologist doesn't care if it's Morally Superior(tm) Free Software, or Evil Capitalistic Proprietary Software, just as long as the decisions it makes won't kill his patient.
I work in the Medical Hardware/Software industry. When the FDA discovers a bug in the software, you MUST fix it. You don't have the luxury of hoping some other hacker might figure out a solution. You don't have the luxury of pondering what to do. You WILL fix it, and you WILL fix it by a certain date, or your software will no longer be used.
The FDA doesn't care if your license announces the lack of warranty. Neither does the anesthesiologist. Neither does the patient. It will be demonstrated to work right the first time it is used in a clinical setting, or it won't be used at all.
Because of these "rules", some Open Source project models won't work at all with medical software, and the typical "release it as GPL and post it on the net" is one of them. However, something similar to Apache's "gather a group of experts and limit membership" model would work. The FSF be damned when it comes to a patient's life! I don't want medical software to be "free"! I want the software under the developer's shackles and chains! I only want experts working on it. I don't want something that's Joe Schmoe's weekend hobby. If the developer needs to use a proprietary libary, I want him to have a license that lets him do it. Ditto for air traffic control software.
I'm sure that there's a Free Software development model that will work for such projects. And I am sure that there will be several such project. However, no proprietary closed source software that saves people's lives will ever be Evil in my book, ever.
Some will abandon Linux because it's mainstream. How many will do this? I have no clue. But there will be another group who will abandon Linux shortly for an entirely different reason: politics.
When GNU finally releases a semi-stable Hurd, a major exodus will occur. There are too many AC's ill-contented with running GNU/Linux. They want GNU/GNU. They want politically correct software created by politically correct people. They don't want a kernel that includes an obnoxious clause allowing non-GPL modules. Just as some BSD-freaks carefully excise any trace of GNU from their systems, these new Hurdites will excise all remnants of GNUless code from their boxen. If you thought the holy wars of the past were bloody, you haven't seen anything until you've seen the disciples recieve their book of Revelations.
Just so that I'm not misunderstood, these are not the same people as the Hurd developers.
Here he goes again! For someone who claimed he's on the verge of joining the libertarians, Katz doesn't have clue as to what liberty even means.
If the government were passing laws telling who theaters could and could not admit, then he would have a valid point. But theaters are privately owned businesses. If they don't want to admit children to certain movies, then that is their business. Freedom is not about one group of people telling another group how to conduct their day-to-day affairs.
If you feel so strongly about this, why don't you just go open up your own theatre? It's certainly much more productive than whining.
I was using GNU tools years before the Linux kernel was even started. I was grateful for them then, and I'm grateful for them now. But at some point I'm going to have to stop fawning over the superhuman greatness that is Richard Stallman and get on with my own life.
Modern physics would be nothing yet for the tireless work of last century's physicists. Does this mean I have to refer to Newtonian/Einsteinian physics? My computer would be nothing without it's motherboard, so do I have to refer to it as my FEC/AMD?
The whole of this operating system is greater than the sum of it's parts. The GNU project laid down some logs, as did X and BSD, then Linus Torvalds came along with a spark and the whole thing became a bonfire. So do we call it "log"? Sure, "spark" isn't an accurate word either, but neither is "log/spark".
However much Richard may want it otherwise, the movement is not his.
For the record, Linus Torvalds and Eric Raymond ARE VERY GRATEFUL to Richard Stallman. But you don't have to abandon all of your religious, political and philosophical beliefs just to say "thank you", and you don't have to continually kiss someone's feet to show gratitude.
I don't know if it will be finished and out of beta in time for KDE 2.0, but the KImageShop (KImage's big brother) is coming along. It will be a full image processing program. It uses OpenParts and Corba for additional filters, plugins, tools, etc. It will even use native GIMP plugins!
I've got the 2.0 disks and manuals. If you want them, Ricochet, let me know!
Okay, I'm not reading the comments on this, there's just to many to go through. So I hope this hasn't been hashed to death already.
Katz went and mentioned libertarianism, then derides private business owners for setting rules for their own establishments. What gives?
Sure, governments are talking about regulating the theatre business, and in some locales, already are. But this wasn't the main point of the article. Rather, it bemoaned the fact the theatre owners were setting rules for their businesses.
If it becomes an established premise that privately owned theatres are not allowed to set their own rules, then it's not long at all before fine restaurants have to abandon 'coat and tie' rules, hardware stores forced to sell spray paint to hoodlums, churches having to allow all to attend their sacraments, etc, etc. Hell, it wouldn't be much longer until Katz writes an article about how horrible it is that I put a "No Solicitors" sign on my door to my home!
I don't see a huge difference between the linux market and the linux community. They are mostly one and the same. There will be some people who aren't in the market, refusing to buy anything, and downloading everything. These people are rare (even 1.89$ for a distro disk counts as a purchase). Then there will be the truly clueless who buy JBuilder for Linux to run on their WinBox. Everyone else is both using Linux and buying stuff for Linux.
Yes, there are hardcore Linux users and lightweight, parttime Linux users. But they are both part of the community.
IBM is a member of the Apache Group, and not the other way around. It's a quite different state of affairs than with Apple or Netscape.
Apache has a culture that is much different than many open source projects. So far it seems as if IBM fits in well.
Go ahead a fire up a GNUPM. Make your own if you don't want someone else's free software. The more the merrier. Co-opt the mandrake code if you want. Embrace and extend.
But why wait until now? What was wrong with last week? Last month? Why wait until someone got half the work done for you before starting? The free software community would be better served if people helped with existing projects rather than trying to put a "G" in front of everything.
To misquote Gandalf: "Not all that's GPL is GNU. Not all that is BSD is Bad. Look for great things to happen, outside of the RedHat labs."
Those folks watching 10 hours of TV a day are the Nielson Homes. For those that don't know, Nielson does the TV ratings. Not just anybody can get a Nielson box to put on top of their set. You have to be a TV junky to get one. It's the average Nielson Home that has the TV one ten hours a day. Half of them have it on longer!
:-) ) I only watched about six hours of TV a week, so it wasn't enough for them. (About as stupid as Gallop cutting their poll short when they found out I was writing in "none of the above")
I was once part of the Nielson "family" for about a week. They kicked me out of the program since I wasn't the "typical television viewer". (Anyone who's ever studied statistics reread that last sentence
Now ask yourself, if you were a TV producer, wouldn't you be interested in which shows people tuned into if they only tuned into one show? Who cares about people who change to a program just because the previous one went to a commercial break.
I no longer own a TV. I suddenly realized that I hadn't turned the thing on in six weeks, so I sold it.
"Debian is a very free and democratic distribution. If your ideas are good, they will be included."
:-) )
What?! Only the Debian developers get to choose what gets included. It isn't a democracy. It's an enlightened benevolent oligarchy (one of the developers is enlightened, but he's not necessarily the one who's benevolent
If there should ever be a truly democratic distribution, I'll run in terror the opposite direction. And anyone who thinks through the consequences will do the same.
The UN doesn't have the authority to levy a tax on any nation. They can beg, plead, suggest and whine, but as it now stands, they are not a "real" government. Should they succeed in levying a tax on nations, it would open up a whole can of worms.
"Instead, they just blindely rip off all the hard work debian users have done (yes, I know they legally can, but that doesn't mean I like it any more)"
Isn't that the point of free software? So that other people can use it? If the developers desire other people to use their source code, then they'll release it as open source. If they didn't want people to modify anything without their explicit permission, they wouldn't have done so.
If you are a developer, and you get upset that other people can copy, distribute and modify your source code, then why would you do such a fscking stupid thing as releasing it under a free software license?
And if you aren't a developer, what business is it of yours if a developer allows other people to use his or her work?
"I'm willing to accept this level of tyranny for the time being."
I seem to recall Lenin saying something very similar. If you consider free software to be liberty, then think on this "Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for some security deserve neither." What is this "time being" stuff?
"Why do you use GPLed code?" Because this is not a liberty issue. Whether I use GPL or BSD or Proprietary is no different than if I use IBM's, Sun's or HP's hardware. But if my use of the software necessitates that I modify or distribute it, then I don't use GPL. Not because I think it's inferior or immoral or not free enough, but because I wish others to share my code. The GPL severly restricts the manner in which my code can be shared.
Free software is not free speech!
I don't think he accused RMS of that. However, you can't deny that many of Richard's followers have said nearly the same thing, just not in quite so violent of verbage.
Calling the GPL the "GPV" is just a mild form of satire. It pokes fun at exclusivity clauses in a "free license. Lighten up! Have you never mischaracterized MS as M$? Have you never called Windows as Windoze? Honestly now!
Apparently it's okay for RMS and his disciples to mistype the users of proprietary software as "slaves".
The scientific community is hardly the utopia you describe. Fierce competition exists to acquire the limited grants available. Governments are lobbied for additional funding on glorious project Alpha, and if there isn't enough tax dollars to go around, then just take it away from that frivolous project Beta. And those few institutions that get away from the competitive infighting degenerate into mutual admiration societies.
I'm not criticizing the scientific community, just trying to point out that they're no different than any other community.
Why do you have to equate nihilistic anarchy with liberty? Since you mentioned libertarianism, it's basic tenet is that one cannot deprive another of their liberty (non-initiation of force). By punching me in the nose, you have violated my fundamental rights. By disallowing force/coercion/violence, you have not diminished anyone's liberty. Nihilism is a much different thing than liberty.
Minimalistic libertarian government is of course less free than anarchy, and if human beings were angels, then anarchy would work. But BSD licenses have nothing whatsoever to do with anarchy! Neither does the GPL have anything whatsoever to do with liberty! These are licenses that grant permissions, not political rights.
You lose no freedom at all by using a BSD license. If microsoft comes along and "borrows" your code, it's still there! You have lost nothing, nada, zippo. You may be pissed because they aren't as altruistic as you are, but so what? The BSD says "I'm sharing my code with the world". The GPL says "I'm only sharing my code with those who share their code with me".
The problem with the GPL is it's "viral" nature. If I am coding with a GPL package, I must make sure that everything else I code with is GPL. If I am coding with a BSD package, I can code with everything else that is not GPL. Talk all you want about "free speech", but the BSD talks about "freedom of assembly"! Free speech means nothing if it is illegal for some people to speak.
So my predictions were off a bit. I failed to include any possibility of arguments over who has the largest penis, RMS or TC. So far I haven't seen any gun-toting threads, but libertarians were flamed nonetheless. So my predictions were pretty good.
It just goes to show that free software has progressed beyond the political party stage, it is now a bona-fide religion.