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Well, the way I understand RMS's fomulation of the 4 basic freedoms is that the right to keep your code secret is a freedom of the individual, not of the softwa
by devcpp 13y ago
Well, the way I understand RMS's fomulation of the 4 basic freedoms is that the right to keep your code secret is a freedom of the individual, not of the software, because no one can enjoy software that they couldn't have had if that right hadn't been granted. On the other hand, removing this right "frees" the software. You see, the FSF is all about "free software", not free people. Only indirectly do the people benefit from the software being free.
More practically, history has shown us that the GPL is necessary in order to ensure that companies don't short the community, suddenly improve everything and leave us with 99% of people using the proprietary fork. To illustrate my point, the clearest example (and the only large one) is the free distributions of BSD, mainly used by companies developing proprietary forks for it and contributing back very little. On the other side is Linux, used by companies for its freedom, security and reliability. The companies using it contribute back because they have to, continually making it stronger and always remaining free (unlike BSD, which can have many proprietary and untrusted libraries which cannot be used with security or reliability in mind). Linux is therefore getting larger only thanks to the GPL and its strong enforcement.
And this example can be applied to the entire copyleft vs permissive license debate, showing how software being free benefits the people more than people being free.
- loup-vaillant 13y agoWhile it doesn't really changes the conclusions, you're a bit off the mark. The FSF is about free people. Free software is just a mean, and they will use whatever licenses they think promotes freedom the most. That's why the GNU C standard library is in LGPL: the GPL itself would have prevented GCC from becoming popular, resulting in less freedom for the people. Also, looking at the history of GCC and the Hurd kernel, you can see they don't limit themselves to licenses. You seem to imply that the GPL forbids you to keep your code secret. It doesn't. The right for private modification is preserved by the GPL. Only public modifications must be distributed in source form. Companies don't contribute back to Linux because they have to. First, it's often more cost-effective to push changes upstream than maintaining them yourself. Second, monetizing private changes with GPL software is very very hard when the main distribution channel is gratis. Third people like to be good citizen. If I do changes for my company, and my company cannot possibly monetize the secrecy of those changes, why not contribute back? If people and companies were forced to contribute back changes, they probably wouldn't use the software in the first place. Now yeah, Linux is indeed larger than BSD thanks to the GPL.