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It's confusing if you think about it in terms of developer freedom, which the GPL isn't written for. It's about a user's freedom to run, study, modify, and dis
by undershirt 13y ago
It's confusing if you think about it in terms of developer freedom, which the GPL isn't written for. It's about a user's freedom to run, study, modify, and distribute software however they want. It's this seed of freedom that prevents software from controlling the users. That's what the GPL protects.
So your objection to the GPL is essentially that it doesn't grant you the freedom to take away these user rights.
- gress 13y agoIsn't a user who modifies and distributes software otherwise known as a developer?
- SomeCallMeTim 13y agoExactly! Especially for programming tools like GCC or Clang, the end user is by definition a developer.
- dllthomas 13y agoNo, because they might be paying someone else to do the development.
- gress 13y agoSo this is about protecting the rights of people rich enough to hire developers to work on bespoke projects that cannot be distributed as proprietary. I.e. Large corporations.
- dllthomas 13y agoI am currently paying for some bespoke software development (split with two other individuals).
- gress 13y agoIs it under the GPL?
- dllthomas 13y agoAGPL, as it happens.
- dllthomas 13y agoWhile the above is the case, I'd just like to note that it misses the thrust of the subthread - my point was that it can demonstrably be affordable for other than "large corporations", which is the case regardless of the license under which I am releasing it.
- gress 13y agoI wasn't speaking in absolutes, so one counter anecdote hardly defeats the point. Bespoke development is clesrly out of reach of most end-users.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dllthomas 13y ago"I wasn't speaking in absolutes, so one counter anecdote hardly defeats the point." You were talking out your ass, is what you were doing. An anecdote about THREE. INDIVIDUALS. doing X pretty solidly "defeats the point" that X is reserved to "large corporations" - we're not even a mid-sized corporation! None of the three of us currently paying for bespoke development is particularly wealthy (one is a part-time music teacher), if we'd gone overseas (or even out of state) we could lower development cost further, and the scope of our project is much larger than the minimum meaningful chunk of work. "Bespoke development is cle[a]rly out of reach of most end-users." Bespoke development is not out of reach of most end users, at least in terms of resources required. I would put forward that basically any user desiring a particular feature or small functionality change - outside of extreme examples - could financially manage it if 1) they cared enough and 2) they found sufficient friends interested in the same, and that for most users and simple tasks, "sufficient friends" is not a hugely high number. Organizationally, most users would presently have a hard time picking an appropriate developer and working with them, but that's a separate problem that numerous groups are working on solving. With proprietary software, on the other hand, bespoke development is far further out of reach, because there is dramatically less competition - only the original authors can bid to modify a piece of proprietary software so no two groups are bidding on the same job.