>The GPL isn't restricting your freedom, your employer is. I'm freelance. I write games and apps, and I do contract work. I can't use GPL software (except for

>The GPL isn't restricting your freedom, your employer is. I'm freelance. I write games and apps, and I do contract work. I can't use GPL software (except for GCC, which I already noted) in creating any of the products that I create because I need to make money. Not everyone can make a Free product so popular that they can make money being paid to maintain it. I think there are probably fewer than twenty examples of such products that are actually monetarily successful for their creators, and I've read multiple stories of developers who had crazy-popular free products and who were unable to make ends meet. Not sure how you expect "my employer" to make money giving products away for free either. It's not "my employer" but the market realities that restrict my freedom with respect to GPL. I can't even publish an iOS app with GPL code; blame Apple all you want, but iOS and Android are gold mines of contract opportunities. You're telling me I should stand on some feel-good principle and ignore the $125-150/hour contract offers that keep pouring in and instead take a job making free software for 1/3 that amount? If I can even find such a position? Sorry, I'm taking the money. You can make the sacrifice if you want. >Microsoft will charge you for the privilege of using their inferior compiler Express editions have been free for years. And that includes the entire VS suite as well as command line compilers. >"Oh boy! B is giving me more stuff for free than A was, I'm going to go shit on A and make demands!" Umm...hello? That's entirely unlike what I said. What I said was: Lots of Free stuff sucks enough I'm willing to pay for closed alternatives. That's two kinds of payment: Paying with dollars, and paying with the restrictions in my freedom. And I'm saying the transaction is worth it. I'm not making any demands. I am saying that a lot of free software sucks compared to the alternatives, but that's just the truth. In the case of Clang, it's awesome to me that it's BSD-free. If I need it in a piece of software, I can use it without question. Might it end up in a proprietary package? Yes. But if that user makes changes they'll likely send them back upstream so that other users of Clang will benefit.