I keep trying to provoke a reasoned argument with a pro-FSF person, this seems like as good of an opportunity as any. You may want to move this to email (my em

I keep trying to provoke a reasoned argument with a pro-FSF person, this seems like as good of an opportunity as any. You may want to move this to email (my email is in my profile). > I face backlash from people who see no ethical concerns with proprietary software I think this could be clearer. RMS himself has stated [0] that selling exceptions is perfectly fine, so even free software zealots do not object to proprietary licensing in all of its forms. I think most people object to proprietary licensing in some forms. This is a case where speaking in riddles and platitudes is not effective policy. > or who are apologetic to "open source" instead Again this is a platitude turn of phrase. I support some kinds of open source and not others, as do I expect most thinking people. Does that make me "apologetic"? Am I the problem? No clue. > Usually it's in the form of some smartass who will redefine the word "freedom" to mean something different from the context at hand Quite frankly, one could accuse the entire Free Software movement of this, as that is essentially its purpose: to redefine the loaded term "freedom" in a nonintuitive way. But accepting for the sake of argument the FSF's vision of software "freedom" as the correct definition, I am not convinced it is an actual view instead of a post-hoc rationalization. For example, the FSF claims [1] the RPL is non-free for 3 reasons: 1. It puts limits on prices charged for an initial copy. 2. It requires notification of the original developer for publication of a modified version. 3. It requires publication of any modified version that an organization uses, even privately. Now my question is this: which of the four freedoms, specifically, give rise to these objections? Because from my POV the RPL not only protects the four freedoms, but does so strongly, for exactly the reasons here that are presented as so-called "objections". So, the only conclusion that I can draw, is that the 4Fs are a lot of nonsense, a "just-so" story to explain why GPL License is Best License. Freedom is allowed to go so far, but no further, until GPL v4, and then we can go further. I am sorry if some of this seems trollish or offputting. I promise it is not. I have read probably hundreds of books and essays on this and I cannot find anything that satisfies me that "Free Software" is an intellectually defensible philosophy. This may be because the people who are best-positioned to defend it have better things to do than defend it to me. I want to like the free software community, and we do collaborate, in a sense, but it is always strategic and not ideological. It just so happens, in cases, the GPL and my objectives are compatible. But the FSF's objectives and my objectives are not really compatible at all. So there is the same funny taste in my mouth from working at cross-purposes that I get when writing proprietary software. It has the same artificiality. [0] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions [1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#RPL http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#RPL