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it would have been absurd to write that toolchain with a "kind of free" license. why would RMS bother? it's not like he didn't have access to existing softwar

it would have been absurd to write that toolchain with a "kind of free" license. why would RMS bother? it's not like he didn't have access to existing software. i'm guessing you think that's just "incidental"... but that's a very strange argument to ever make if you think anything has any explanatory power at all.

coldtea 10y ago
>it would have been absurd to write that toolchain with a "kind of free" license. why would RMS bother? it's not like he didn't have access to existing software. BSD/MIT is not "kind of free". It's freer (more people can do more things) than the GPL.
- simondedalus 10y ago
  that depends on your opinions regarding free software. people who support the GPL would probably call BSD/MIT less free, because the software is "free, for now," or "free, for me." that might not be good enough for actual freedom to be maintained, along the lines they're thinking about freedom. i'm not going to argue about that though. surely you're familiar with the territory. the point, though, is that the GNU ethos is the reason for the GNU tools, and the onus would be on you to show that that ethos was interchangeable with some other in order to get where we are today. when you're explaining an event in history, you need to take the facts and look for "why did things happen this way after that particular event?" you can't just substitute a comparable event and say "everything would be the same." if we're talking about the legal basis of this or that for the GPL and BSD licenses, sure, you can interchange things and show that "here, in this case, you'd be regretting GPL, and in this case [etc etc etc]." but for the course of history, you actually have to be much more careful with your scope... it's unlikely that one change (one that the primary person involved, RMS, himself took to be the central point of all it) could have no effects, or no salient ones. notice how these points are distinct. RMS wouldn't but have written the GPL. history worked out how it did. these are different than your or my opinions on the merits of varying degrees of permissiveness in licenses.
- tremon 10y ago
  It's freer That depends on your goals and definitions, of course. The goal of the GPL is to ensure freedom of the code, by placing demands on the distributor. The BSD license does not do this, so a developer is "more free" with BSD-licensed code. However, the code is "more free" when it's GPL-licensed. Which you prefer is a personal choice, but it's kinda pointless to argue which one is "more free" as the licenses have different interpretations of freedom.

coldtea 10y ago

>it would have been absurd to write that toolchain with a "kind of free" license. why would RMS bother? it's not like he didn't have access to existing software. BSD/MIT is not "kind of free". It's freer (more people can do more things) than the GPL.

simondedalus 10y ago
that depends on your opinions regarding free software. people who support the GPL would probably call BSD/MIT less free, because the software is "free, for now," or "free, for me." that might not be good enough for actual freedom to be maintained, along the lines they're thinking about freedom. i'm not going to argue about that though. surely you're familiar with the territory. the point, though, is that the GNU ethos is the reason for the GNU tools, and the onus would be on you to show that that ethos was interchangeable with some other in order to get where we are today. when you're explaining an event in history, you need to take the facts and look for "why did things happen this way after that particular event?" you can't just substitute a comparable event and say "everything would be the same." if we're talking about the legal basis of this or that for the GPL and BSD licenses, sure, you can interchange things and show that "here, in this case, you'd be regretting GPL, and in this case [etc etc etc]." but for the course of history, you actually have to be much more careful with your scope... it's unlikely that one change (one that the primary person involved, RMS, himself took to be the central point of all it) could have no effects, or no salient ones. notice how these points are distinct. RMS wouldn't but have written the GPL. history worked out how it did. these are different than your or my opinions on the merits of varying degrees of permissiveness in licenses.
tremon 10y ago
It's freer That depends on your goals and definitions, of course. The goal of the GPL is to ensure freedom of the code, by placing demands on the distributor. The BSD license does not do this, so a developer is "more free" with BSD-licensed code. However, the code is "more free" when it's GPL-licensed. Which you prefer is a personal choice, but it's kinda pointless to argue which one is "more free" as the licenses have different interpretations of freedom.