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Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 19:42:32 -0700
From: Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>
To: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Cc: Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>,
       hch@infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Bitkeeper outrage, old and new
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> > Just admit that the GPL forces people to do things just the same as a
> > traditional license forces people to do things.  You speak of freedom
> > yet you took that freedom away with the GPL.  If you really believed
> > in freedom then the GPL would just be the same as the public domain.
> > *That's* freedom.  The BSD license is far closer to a truly free license,
> > the GPL isn't even remotely close to a free license.
> 
> Hogwash.  The BSD license has not provisions to keep the source code
> freely available.  Consider what the world would be like if anyone was
> allowed to do anything to you they wanted, if murder was legal.
> 
> The GPL forces people to respect others freedom to use a work so
> covered.  That is still a power, but used in a good way.  The power
> to silence criticism is definitely not a power that enhances anyones
> freedom.

Hogwash indeed.  Free means the freedom to do whatever you want.
Consider the US free speech.  Nobody says "this sort of speech is good
for the world, therefor it is the sanctioned form of free speech and
all other forms are prohibited".  That's not freedom, that's someone
playing God.  The GPL is *not* about freedom it is about forcing the
source code to be freely available.  And it does a fairly poor job of
that, if it really wanted to do so it would be far more simplistic about
it and say "any changes you make must be published within 24 hours or
your license is revoked".

All you are doing is saying that your goals are better than other goals.
That's not freedom, that is you deciding what is best for the world.
You may well be right, your goals may be what is best for the world.
None the less, that's not freedom.  That's Big Brother making decisions
for all "the little people" in the world.  And, surprise surprise, you
may not be right.  Freedom is about everyone have equal rights to make
their own choices, nobody died and elected you God.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 
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