amicus_curious wrote:
I simply made the comment long ago that the BusyBox authors and their lawsuits were useless activities that gave FOSS a bad name. All that anyone has been able to assert, yourself included, is that the GPL demands that a user follow its exact rules to the letter.
Authors who license their code under the GPL believe that users should have the right to run, read, modify, and share software. Through the GPL, they can assure that users have these rights at least for the software to which they hold copyright. When a user has only a binary delivered without GPL notification he cannot read or modify it, and does not know he is permitted to share it. For people who value the freedom of users, this problem outweighs other considerations. The hurt feelings of those who do not deal properly with licensed software are hardly paramount when compliance is so trivially easy. The purpose of free software, as envisioned by the FSF and embodied in the GPL, is for users to have the four freedoms. It does the FSF no good to have a good reputation if that reputation is acquired by allowing users to be denied the four freedoms. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
