Whether in activism or negotiation, oversimplifying complex problems, then taking absolute positions and refusing to compromise, doesn't work. The only upshot o

Whether in activism or negotiation, oversimplifying complex problems, then taking absolute positions and refusing to compromise, doesn't work. The only upshot of black-and-white positioning is a reputation for being uncompromising. RMS is and will always occupy that space. And as an activist he'll go down as largely unsuccessful on his own terms, beyond the threshold of popularizing his own ideas among his own kind within his own industry. The four (actually five) freedoms aren't a very good way to break down what people want to do with software. But RMS and other activists lauded for being uncompromising compromised several kinds of freedom for copyleft, no matter how you slice it. Parity isn't rescinding "run for whatever purpose" wholesale any more than GPLv2 rescinded "patch for whatever purpose". Parity applies share-alike to execution as GPL applied it to patching and extending and AGPL and OSL applied it to ... also execution. How come some freedoms have to be absolute, and others can be qualified with rules that require respecting others' freedom? Because that's how the open source marketers squared feel-good libertarian rhetoric with what RMS and those drafting off him actually wrote in their terms. Nobody outside the small community of wonks and FSF adherents even thinks in terms of the "four freedoms". As for leaning on copyright law: That law approximates what early FOSS activists opposed, not what they wanted. And we still don't know how far "derivative work" reaches in software under US law. Most FOSS activists aren't happy where the courts seem to be taking it, e.g. under Oracle v. Google. You don't have to ask me which kinds of copyleft rules I'd support. You can read Parity and API Copyleft for yourself. And I've never referred to those licenses as "open source" myself, though others have. I'm more and more tempted to start. Saying GPL is FOSS and Parity isn't because FOSS, and defining FOSS to draw the kind at GPL-style copyleft, is circular. That's typical of nearly all the homespun vocabulary, views, and theory of open software licensing. We're trying to apply after-the-fact justifications, theorizations, and rhetoric for what was in essence a marketing coup to new license terms, and they're predictably faltering. I don't know which pro-permissive, anti-copyleft organization you were referring to, but if it was Blue Oak, you might like to know that I facilitated the drafting processes for both Parity and the Blue Oak model.