Once upon a time, I was in the camp who disliked the GPL. Because I didn't understand it. Maybe I just wasn't far enough into development to appreciate the limi

Once upon a time, I was in the camp who disliked the GPL. Because I didn't understand it. Maybe I just wasn't far enough into development to appreciate the limitations of important tools and libraries being proprietary, or maybe I wasn't disillusioned enough with American capitalist ideals. Anyway, I read "Free Software, Free Society," a collection of essays by Richard Stallman, and it completely changed my mind on the matter. (The book is available free in PDF form from GNU.) We all build on the work of others' before us, and limiting those who come after, taking away the freedom of the end user and future developers who play by the same rules, is shitty. This is the simple premise of the GPL: if those who develop proprietary software won't let end users and other developers benefit from their code, we don't let them benefit from our Free code. GPL is all about protecting the end user's freedom to use and modify the software.