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Your use of "rights" is a little unclear. We all stand on the shoulders of giants in all things. Yet I most certainly have the right to prevent people from stan
by forrestthewoods 12y ago
Your use of "rights" is a little unclear. We all stand on the shoulders of giants in all things. Yet I most certainly have the right to prevent people from standing on my shoulders. I write proprietary code for video game entertainment so I regularly take advantage of that right.
The GPL license has the right to limit what freedoms I have as a developer if I choose to use code it covers. It limits the freedom of some people (developers) to protect the freedom of other people (consumers). I similarly have the right to choose a different license that prioritizes my freedoms of a developer over the freedoms of consumers.
And all of these things are possible due to the restriction of freedom over all of us as governed by copyright law.
- rbanffy 12y agoYou only have the right to prevent people from standing on your shoulders as long as the giants you are standing upon did not dictate the terms under which you get to enjoy the view. If they say that being generous is a condition to stand on their shoulders, those are the conditions. The GPL limits your freedom of limiting the freedoms of others given by those who wrote the software your software depends upon. If you want to limit the freedoms of your users, you don't have the right to use software explicitly licensed to preserve those rights to limit them. If you want to do that, you either use software that was not made to preserve user freedoms, such as software licensed under BSD, Apache, or you write your own. > And all of these things are possible due to the restriction of freedom over all of us as governed by copyright law. Yes! And isn't it the Most Brilliant Hack Ever?