Re: [fluid-dev] Another application using FluidSynth announced

[Andrew Suffield]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 11:38:46PM +0200, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas wrote:
> Likewise, for me it is not only important the letter of the LGPL license, but 
> the ethical principles inspiring the libre software movement. For instance, 
> the principle of no discrimination that is not part of the LGPL, but is 
> included in the Open Source Definition, the Debian Social Contract ("No 
> Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor") and the free software definition: 
> "freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)".
> 
> Forbidding FluidSynth in the App Store means to deny all the iPxxx users even 
> the knowledge that this project exists, not to mention the right to use the 
> program. In the long run, this means more harm than good for us.

I observe merely that this is precisely the argument used by the BSD
people to justify the position that the GPL is wrong and should not be
used, and only the BSD licenses are really free.

(That is, the GPL's restrictions on distribution are a de facto
restriction on use. In Debian this is occasionally referred to as the
"restricting the field of endeavour of writing proprietary software
that contains GPLed components" argument, which is not accepted as a
legitimate interpretation of that clause)