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>Well, the GPL mandates the right to use the application, and that a redistributor cannot restrict it (section 0, preambule and section 6, IIRC); that right is
by Aldo_MX 11y ago
>Well, the GPL mandates the right to use the application, and that a redistributor cannot restrict it (section 0, preambule and section 6, IIRC); that right is not guaranteed by MIT, BSD, MPL or Apache.
I've yet to see a person who hasn't been able to get the free version of Lua/zlib/libjpeg/libpng/etc. just because some of its rights were restricted by a commercial product (ex. a game).
I'm not saying that the GPL is a bad license, but I personally believe that people who defend it by saying it gives you "more freedom" than MIT/BSD/Apache-like licenses should do a reality check first. More freedom in legalese doesn't equal more freedom in practice.
- jbk 11y agoI'm sorry, but you are answering on the side to what I've said. It's about freedom to use, not to get/modify/redistribute.
- Aldo_MX 11y agoWhat's the difference? If you want to use zlib in a project you are making, you proceed to get the free version of zlib first, you are not going to take the version of zlib from a commercial product.
- jbk 11y agoYou are speaking of developer freedom, not end-user freedom, which was parent's question. zlib is a library, not an end-user application.
- pornel 11y agoThere are two different situations where this matters: 1. When lua/zlib/libjpeg is compiled into a closed system (perhaps even with DRM), you can't modify that copy of the library. For example you don't have freedom to replace your iPhone's JPEG encoder with MozJPEG. 2. GPL code only helps projects that respect users' freedom, so only Free projects can benefit from it. OTOH do-whatever-you-want code helps both Free and closed projects alike. It allows user-hostile projects to take gratis code, add one (mis)feature, and with little effort compete with the open-source version (see: majority of Android market share belongs to derivatives with unremovable crapware and locked bootloaders). It's hard to argue about overall effect in practice — it expands problem from legalese to politics. Maybe carriers would never let Android to take off if it was GPL-licensed, but OTOH a GPL3-licensed Android now would be great: it would still allow vendors to customize and extend it, but wouldn't force users to put up with unremovable crapware.
- Aldo_MX 11y ago1. Actually you can, it's not pretty because it involves code injection, but you can. But anyway, the question is "which kind of end user would want to switch a JPEG encoder and doesn't know about code injection"? Certainly not many. Quoting a comment from above: GPL is only relevant if it can grant freedom to modify software that's relevant. Freedom to modify something you don't really want to use has no value. 2. I hardly see the issue with the Android example, even if Android were GPL-ed, the carriers would include unremovable crapware, because the GPL license doesn't apply to external files.
- pornel 11y ago1. I've meant "can" more as allowed by proprietary licenses and laws like DMCA (by which you can't), than in the hacker sense that you can break all DRM you want and declare copyright is bullshit anyway. > the question is "which kind of end user would want to … No, that's completely missing the point. It's like "We don't need freedom of speech, because most people have nothing interesting to say". 2. GPL3 has anti-tivoization clause, so if they modified Android to prevent removal of any program (closed or not) you would have right to reverse that change and get rid of the crapware.