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I could have used some examples of "the war" in progress. Personally, this war has not really impinged on me. I'm not claiming it's not happening, but it woul

I could have used some examples of "the war" in progress. Personally, this war has not really impinged on me. I'm not claiming it's not happening, but it would be good to have some evidence that it is happening. Or that the war has gotten hotter recently. Also, I have to say that I think it's a mistake to view "open source" as solely motivated by commerce. One big practical difference between FSF and OSI is how accepting they are of permissive licenses like BSD and MIT. Basically, OSI likes them and FSF doesn't. (Or at least FSF prefers copyleft licenses like GPL.) It's true that permissive licenses are more commerce-friendly, but one could also argue that they are more freedom-friendly as well. After all, with a permissive license, you can add your own proprietary extensions to a codebase and then sell the resulting executable without sharing the source for the extensions. With copyleft licenses, you are restricted from doing this. Thus permissive is arguably more free-as-in-freedom. Of course, copyleft advocates argue that copyleft licenses are more free in a larger sense, in that they guarantee that the code stays free. And, you know, maybe they're right. But I think it's something that reasonable people can disagree about. Whereas a lot of copyleft advocates seem to think that permissive licenses are a sign of moral weakness. I would say the permissive licenses are "free" in a libertarian sense, and the copyleft licenses are "free" in maybe an anarcho-syndicalist sense. It seems like a lot of people are convinced that copyleft licenses are more ethical than permissive licenses. I'm afraid I just don't agree with this.

orangeshark 8y ago
The preference for permissive licenses vs copyleft license depends on where you value the freedom. As a developer who wants to write software, you might prefer permissive licenses because you have the freedom to do whatever you want with the software like including it in your propreitary software. As a user who ultimately runs the software, you might prefer the copyleft license because you get those same freedoms as the developer. I would admit that whether a user uses software that uses a permissive or copyleft license, it is pretty much the same.

orangeshark 8y ago

The preference for permissive licenses vs copyleft license depends on where you value the freedom. As a developer who wants to write software, you might prefer permissive licenses because you have the freedom to do whatever you want with the software like including it in your propreitary software. As a user who ultimately runs the software, you might prefer the copyleft license because you get those same freedoms as the developer. I would admit that whether a user uses software that uses a permissive or copyleft license, it is pretty much the same.