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I would argue that the GPL is so restrictive to violate the principles of FOSS. BSD or public domain is better and more free.
by mruts 7y ago
I would argue that the GPL is so restrictive to violate the principles of FOSS. BSD or public domain is better and more free.
- shmerl 7y agoThat doesn't fit reality. For example, Apple are avoiding and even banning GPL, preferring BSD. And they are one of the worst anti-FOSS values examples (due to extreme lock-in, patent aggression and so on).
- mruts 7y agoFreedom isn't about people doing things you like. It's about allowing people to do things you don't like.
- shmerl 7y agoSo Apple are pretty much anti-freedom, since they for example don't like competing browsers (which are FOSS) and they don't allow them in their store. They also don't like people installing something they don't control, so they try to forbid it with DRM and other junk. The whole idea of lock-in is anti-freedom, since it reduces choice.
- mruts 7y agoPreventing others from reducing choice is the epitome of anti-freedom. With freedom, you have to take the bad with the good, and trust in humanity that the good will outweigh the bad.
- shmerl 7y ago> Preventing others from reducing choice is the epitome of anti-freedom. That's a fallacy of the same sort as party slogans from Nineteen Eighty-Four, just reversed. There they said "Freedom is slavery". What you are saying is "Tyranny is freedom" (since tyrants should be free to oppress). That's simply bunk. Tyranny is not freedom.
- _emacsomancer_ 7y agoGPL is about user freedom. You're talking about someone else's freedom; not user freedom. GPL doesn't say 'you can't make money on this software' or even 'you can't do evil things with this software'. It just says you can't take away other people's freedom to use the software under the same terms.
- trasz 7y agoApple anti-FOSS, given the scale of their involvement in eg LLVM? They are at most anti-GPL.
- yarrel 7y agoYou'd be wrong.