Paul Boddie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It's interesting that you bring this tired thought experiment up in the > context of the original remark: "Its license is far more "free" than > GPL is." If we were focusing on the "vox pop" interpretation of the > word "free", that remark wouldn't make any sense at all: after all, > what's more gratis than gratis (to use a less ambiguous word)?
My only intention was to point out that "Free Software" is a rather misleading term. I still think of the term "Free Software" as false advertising. > Python is moderately successful, yes, but the GPL is a useful tool to > ensure that certain freedoms are preserved. I've been made aware of a > certain level of dissatisfaction about whether organisations porting > Python to other platforms would choose to share their modifications and > improvements with anyone, or whether binary downloads with restrictive > usage conditions would be the best even the customers of such > organisations would be able to enjoy. Ensuring some of those freedoms > can be an effective way of making open source software projects > successful. I'm aware of this concern. I don't think it's justified. Unless you'd like to point out all those closed, proprietary Python implementations that are destroying civilization as we know it. > At least when it comes to software licensing, what probably upsets the > anti-GPL "pragmatic licensing" crowd the most is that Stallman is quite > often right; the BitKeeper debacle possibly being one of the more > high-profile cases of some group's "pragmatism" (or more accurately, > apathy) serving up a big shock long after they'd presumably dismissed > "the hippie nonsense". Stallman thinks selling closed, proprietary software is evil. Stallman thinks buying closed, proprietary software is evil. I find these opinions and "morals" fundamentally and obviously wrong. > Well, from what I've seen of open source software usage in business, a > key motivation is to freeload, clearly driven by people who neither see > nor understand any other dimension of software freedom than your "vox > pop" definition. Such users of open source software could make their > work a lot easier if they contributed back to the projects from which > they obtained the software, but I've seen little understanding of such > matters. Of course, businesses prefer to use euphemisms like "cost > reduction" or "price efficiency" rather than the more accurate > "freeloading" term, and they fail to see any long-term benefits in > anything other than zero cost, zero sharing acquisition and > redistribution of code. But then in some sectors, the game is all about > selling the same solution over and over again to the same customers, so > it's almost understandable that old habits remain. Wah, wah, I gave this software away for free, and people are actually using it without giving anything back! Wah, wah! >> but then that gives me the right to refer to GPL'd software as "free as in >> pushing my >> personal social agenda". > Pushing on whom, though? No-one makes you use GPL'd software by, for > example, installing it on almost every computer you can buy from major > vendors. If, on the other hand, you mean that some social agenda is > being imposed on you because, in choosing to redistribute someone's > work, you are obliged to pass on those freedoms granted to you by the > creator (or distributor) of that work, then complaining about it seems > little more than a foot-stamping exercise than anything else. Now you're just trying to put words into my mouth. I never said anything was being "pushed on" me. I never said anything was being "imposed on" me. I said an agenda was being pushed. Stallman and company have an agenda, and the GPL is their instrument of choice for pushing that agenda. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
