Well, if you wanna redefine words in the english langauge, go ahead. I
frankly couldn't care less what they mean in your particular alternate
universe.
The point is OEMs should have the freedom to bundle whatever they want. And
the last thing anyone needs is bullshit government legislation about
software. Get a grip on reality, that line of thinking never ends well.
That's a purely theoretical control, nobody inspects all their source code,
and very few compile their systems from source. Not to mention there's no
control over the hardware layer anyway, so this is already moot.
No, that's the GPL requirement, if you're dealing with GPL code you have to
abide by it's restrictions, obviously. Copyleft is perfectly fine if that's
what you wanna do, but pretending that a restrictive license is somehow more
"free" or has more "freedom" for anyone than a permissive one is just silly.
Restrictions are restrictions. That's all there is to that. Obviously they're
not all equal, nor did I ever claim they were.
What the OEM thing above is essentially saying is that people are too damn
stupid to know what they want or what's good for them, and as such we must
make all things that doesn't conform with one entirely subjective view of the
world illegal and abolished. This amounts to taking away freedom of choice.
And I think we all know that if the FSF had their way it'd be illegal to
write propriatary software or sell non-open hardware. That's no different
from any other tyranny, what you're advocating does indeed amount to forcing
"freedom" on people.
"the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action"
Indeed, that does sound like freedom, and even someone as horrid as a
hardware store or a programmer should have it.
If they wanna write propriatary software, that's their right. If you don't
wanna use it, that's yours.
In regards to your post, yes, of course the GPL doesn't force anything on
anyone, as it's up to them whether or not to use GPL code in the first place.
Very much like it's up to us whether we buy a computer from Lenovo or use a
system with propriatary components. Nobody's forcing you to use a computer at
all, certainly nobody's forcing you to use Windowns.
My objection is simply to the general notion that software should be somehow
regulated or that OEMs shouldn't be able to put whatever they want on the
hardware they sell.
