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To: Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>
Cc: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>, hch@infradead.org,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Bitkeeper outrage, old and new
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From: ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman)
Date: 20 Oct 2002 21:16:06 -0600
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Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> writes:

> > > 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. 

In the US it is illegal to yell fire in a theater if there is no
fire.  That is there are forms of speech that are clearly bad.

> The GPL is *not* about freedom it is about forcing the
> source code to be freely available.

And freely modifiable.  Which sounds like freedom to me to do pretty
much what I want with the a program.

Code available under the BSD license is freely modifiable, but not
necessarily freely available.

Not being able to get the code sounds a lot less free to me.

> 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.

Given I haven't forced anyone to use GPL'd software I am not forcing anyone
to do anything, unless they want to use my software.  Nor are you
forcing anyone to anything with BitKeeper.  And the kernel is setup so
no one has to use BitKeeper to develop the kernel. 

Using the Linux kernel as a tool to advocate only GPL'd software seems
inappropriate as those are not the aims of the kernel maintainers.  If
RMS wants that he is free to fork the kernel, or write a kernel that
with a license that prohibits people from using software you don't
like.

Eric
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