Re: The Free Software Definition - Free Software Foundation

[mdj <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

On Oct 24, 11:35 am, "Bill Buckels" <bbuck...@mts.net> wrote:

> Back again to Stallman's totalitarianism, and I'll clean that up by
> withdrawing the comment altogether, but my point is really that software
> authors should be remunerated as in every profession.

There are two major flaws in this statement: one being that
remuneration can only be measured in dollars, the other being the
completely inappropriate use of the term 'totalitarianism'.

The GNU GPL is no more, and in fact much less restrictive than a
proprietary software license. Of course, it's designed with the
concept of restricting licensees to the terms of the license in
precisely the same way as a proprietary license, which is why it's
often ironically referred to as 'copyleft'.

It's also ironic that the 'other side' has expended considerable
effort to use the legal system to kill the GPL - something they see as
cancerous. Ok, that's a little closer to the totalitarian definition,
no?

If one appreciates the difference between copyright and license, one
can see how the GPL can in fact be very useful. A classic example is
the company TrollTech, who develop the UI library Qt. This library is
available under the GPL and used as the foundation of the Open Source
desktop environment Qt. However, since the GPL forbids linking against
proprietary software, those wishing to use Qt in a commercial product
must pay TrollTech for a license. In this way, using the GPL serves
the needs and philosophies of both camps. And you call this
Totalitarian? :-)

Of course, actual totalitarianism has and does exist in this world.
Consider for example the 1600 burning at the stake of philosopher
Giordano Bruno, or the the 1633 trial of Galileo Galilei at the
tyrannical, theocratic ministrations of the Roman Catholic Church,
then you might have an idea of what totalitarian actually means.

Matt