5 ms·

"That depends on if you are encouraging "free" for societies interests or "free" for individual/corp interests. " I disagree - the definition of software being

"That depends on if you are encouraging "free" for societies interests or "free" for individual/corp interests. " I disagree - the definition of software being free to modify and redistribute doesn't change based on the intent of the modifier. There are more restrictions on your freedom to do these things under GPLvX than under Apache/etc. A software author chooses which license based on the desire to encourage societal interests or individual interests, but the underlying meaning of 'free' remains constant.

dllthomas 12y ago
Myopically considering the individual piece of code, it's easy to say that a permissive license is more free. The question of "what leads to more freedom in total" is more important, and not as easily answered.
- GrinningFool 12y ago
  Your phrasing implies that invoking more control over the code in a project has the potential to lead to more freedom in total. I'd argue that this is ... if not more myopic, at least a more ego-centric view. That is, it implies that the author knows better than everyone else how to maximize total freedom engendered by his efforts, on the basis of how he or she permits them to be used - instead of allowing others the freedom to make their own choices.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    We're not talking about arbitrary control; we're talking about one specific set of restrictions designed specifically for the protection of freedom. It's quite possible they fail at that, compared to alternatives, but it is not at all incomprehensible that they might succeed - restricting some behavior often leads to more freedom in general, especially when that behavior involves exercise of power over others. Proof of existence, by example: Selling a knife with a "this can't be used for mugging" clause - in a world where mugging wasn't illegal - restricts the freedom of the purchaser but only when you don't consider those they would impact if they exercised that freedom. To be clear, I'm not saying "selling proprietary software is exactly like mugging"; I'm just saying your general "restrictions always mean less freedom" doesn't hold up. All of this is not to say that I think it's entirely clear that copyleft licenses do lead to more freedom overall. My initial statement was precisely that it's not particularly clear. My personal expectation (which I'd argue for if we want to go down that path but hold weakly in that I consider other views reasonable) is that it varies from case to case.

dllthomas 12y ago

Myopically considering the individual piece of code, it's easy to say that a permissive license is more free. The question of "what leads to more freedom in total" is more important, and not as easily answered.

GrinningFool 12y ago
Your phrasing implies that invoking more control over the code in a project has the potential to lead to more freedom in total. I'd argue that this is ... if not more myopic, at least a more ego-centric view. That is, it implies that the author knows better than everyone else how to maximize total freedom engendered by his efforts, on the basis of how he or she permits them to be used - instead of allowing others the freedom to make their own choices.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  We're not talking about arbitrary control; we're talking about one specific set of restrictions designed specifically for the protection of freedom. It's quite possible they fail at that, compared to alternatives, but it is not at all incomprehensible that they might succeed - restricting some behavior often leads to more freedom in general, especially when that behavior involves exercise of power over others. Proof of existence, by example: Selling a knife with a "this can't be used for mugging" clause - in a world where mugging wasn't illegal - restricts the freedom of the purchaser but only when you don't consider those they would impact if they exercised that freedom. To be clear, I'm not saying "selling proprietary software is exactly like mugging"; I'm just saying your general "restrictions always mean less freedom" doesn't hold up. All of this is not to say that I think it's entirely clear that copyleft licenses do lead to more freedom overall. My initial statement was precisely that it's not particularly clear. My personal expectation (which I'd argue for if we want to go down that path but hold weakly in that I consider other views reasonable) is that it varies from case to case.