Hi; you ask:
"So is it ethical, in this case, to restrict their freedom to restrict their own freedom? Or is that nanny statism? It's a bit of a quandry, really."
Its a very good question. So good, in fact, that we wrote a paper on it:). Here is a link. We'd love to get comments from folks.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html#Thir dPartyIdeas
(Its the last paper on that list - titled "A Comparative Ethical Assessment of Free Software Licensing Schemes")
We consider precisely the question you ask above, comparing the GPL to BSD/MIT style licenses.
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Hi; you ask: "So is it ethical, in this case, to restrict their freedom to restrict their own freedom? Or is that nanny statism? It's a bit of a quandry, really." Its a very good question. So good, in fact, that we wrote a paper on it :). Here is a link. We'd love to get comments from folks.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html#Thir dPartyIdeas
(Its the last paper on that list - titled "A Comparative Ethical Assessment of Free Software Licensing Schemes")
We consider precisely the question you ask above, comparing the GPL to BSD/MIT style licenses.