On Thursday, November 1, 2001, at 04:00 AM, goran.hultgren@bluefish.se wrote:
I do understand your observation but honestly - all these comparisons between FSF/GNU/Richard Stallman and Communism/Soviet Union are:
- Quite boring because we have heard them oh so many times...
- Often rather unenlightened (not always, but often)
- Often pure propaganda (see Microsoft trying to pull the EXACT same
stunt) 4. IMHO just totally wrong
The GPL is engineered on purpose to foster free software in favour of "closed proprietary software" (pick your own words if those sound wrong). SqueakL and MIT are not.
Well, not to support the analogy, but there is little doubt that "free software" engineered so you can't do things with it isn't particularly free. The use, indeed pedantic insistence by RMS, on using newspeak in lieu of English and reason to describe things proves this more clearly than anything else. With all due respect, the authoritarian regime of the GPL, whose function is to constrain and limit what may be done with the software, as opposed to the Berkeley license, whose primary function is to pass the software along, shifting risk to the licensee, reserving the bare bones minimum obligation of acknowledgment, makes clear to all which is the free license.
The fact that you can't use GPL in a monolithic image, unless you can relicense EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE IMAGE under GPL proves this clearly.
As to Goran's points, none of them are substantive. 1 and 2 amount to name-calling, proving nothing. 3 is also name-calling and silly, presuming that references to Microsoft somehow marginalizes an argument, and ignores the fact that a substantial contingent of the Slashdot crowd make the same arguments. And 4 simply states a conclusion. In short, none of the four points constitute argument. Interestingly, the paragraph after the numbered points proves too much -- the "engineering" of a society of software users seems, to me, to make the original poster's point more than otherwise.
For me, the main problem with the government analogies is that they are not useful. Even if perfectly descriptive, they are not prescriptive in any meaningful sense, and thus, quibbling about their applicability is nothing more than empty wordplay, leading to arguments such as the above listing "points" that prove nothing.
I have a question here: What do you dislike about the GPL? (assuming that you do dislike the system of old Soviet Union)
The fact that it ultimately limits what I can do with the software in a manner that can rarely be repaired without substantial expense. I can't use GPL software in a monolithic image, and that's very bad for Smalltalk coders. And, in practice, it is impossible to renegotiate a significant term for a proprietary license.
I do a lot of open source compliance advise, and can freely attest that the GPL raises far more problems for promoting the free use of software. Happily, I am nerd as much as lawyer, and can frequently point clients to corresponding free software they can use in its stead.
GPL doesn't promote the propagation of free software (again, using the english denotation of the word "free" rather than the FSF appropriation thereof) so much as it promotes the propagation of GPL'd software. RMS is pleased to admit the truth of this, and to defend it. Not all of us share all of his "vision."