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A year ago I opened a box that my receiver (for my home theater) came in. It had the GPL printed in booklet form. If I didn't know what the GPL was, I'd assume

A year ago I opened a box that my receiver (for my home theater) came in. It had the GPL printed in booklet form. If I didn't know what the GPL was, I'd assume that one of the employees in the factor was a religious nut job and slipped the pamphlet it. The problem with the GPL is that it's not a license. It's a political manifesto. This is why there's the "Simple Public License (SimPL) 2.0," https://opensource.org/licenses/Simple-2.0 https://opensource.org/licenses/Simple-2.0. It's a license that's supposed to be the same as the GPL, but has no manifesto associated with it.

CogitoCogito 6y ago
> The problem with the GPL is that it's not a license. It's a political manifesto. That's not the _problem_ with the GPL, that's the _point_!
selfhoster11 6y ago
It's a political manifesto, because policy-making (de facto, de jure, by private entities, or by governments) is the whole point of politics. If you disagree with another entity's decisions (policies), you can and should oppose.
Tomte 6y ago
No, the license proper is nothing like a political manifesto. The introductory paragraph (preamble) is, and personally I would indeed strip it from the COPYING or LICENSE.txt file and just start at "0. This License applies" whenever using the GPL2.
- xxpor 6y ago
  You're not actually allowed to: >Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. From wiki though: >According to the GPL FAQ, anyone can make a new license using a modified version of the GPL as long as they use a different name for the license, do not mention "GNU", and remove the preamble, though the preamble can be used in a modified license if permission to use it is obtained from the Free Software Foundation (FSF).[60]
eeZah7Ux 6y ago
Is the EULA from Adobe non-political? Or the MIT license? Regulations on car safety?
vvillena 6y ago
Politics is everywhere. The GPL licenses just choose to be explicitely political. After all, any other restrictive license that forbids users to change the product they buy is making a poli1tical statement too, even if it doesn't say so in its preamble.

CogitoCogito 6y ago

> The problem with the GPL is that it's not a license. It's a political manifesto. That's not the _problem_ with the GPL, that's the _point_!

selfhoster11 6y ago

It's a political manifesto, because policy-making (de facto, de jure, by private entities, or by governments) is the whole point of politics. If you disagree with another entity's decisions (policies), you can and should oppose.

Tomte 6y ago

No, the license proper is nothing like a political manifesto. The introductory paragraph (preamble) is, and personally I would indeed strip it from the COPYING or LICENSE.txt file and just start at "0. This License applies" whenever using the GPL2.

xxpor 6y ago
You're not actually allowed to: >Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. From wiki though: >According to the GPL FAQ, anyone can make a new license using a modified version of the GPL as long as they use a different name for the license, do not mention "GNU", and remove the preamble, though the preamble can be used in a modified license if permission to use it is obtained from the Free Software Foundation (FSF).[60]

eeZah7Ux 6y ago

Is the EULA from Adobe non-political? Or the MIT license? Regulations on car safety?

vvillena 6y ago

Politics is everywhere. The GPL licenses just choose to be explicitely political. After all, any other restrictive license that forbids users to change the product they buy is making a poli1tical statement too, even if it doesn't say so in its preamble.