Re: Matt Assay Tells the Truth

[Hyman Rosen]

Rjack wrote:
> Egad!! I thought *freedom* for software developers meant licensing
> their software any way they wished. I didn't know it was the GPL or
> the highway.

This is absolutely correct. Freedom for software developers means that
they may license their software any way they wish. The FSF promotes
freedom for users, however, not software developers, and the freedom
of users is adversely affected when software developers choose non-free
licenses.

> Your link to the self-serving rant by Richard Stallman does nothing
> but confirm his monomanical compulsion to destroy the concept of
> intellectual property.

Stallman believes that users of software should have the freedom to
run, read, modify, and share it. In the case of X Window, for a very
long time its users had those freedoms, but they could have been lost
because the organization primarily responsible for it had the legal
right to do so. Therefore, he urges that free software developers use
the GPL to prevent situations like this from occurring.

Notice that the FSF does nothing at all to prevent software developers
from doing anything they wish, as long as they do not involve themselves
with GPLed code. They operate by presenting attractive alternatives so
that developers of non-free software are disadvantaged in the marketplace
by having to duplicate functionality that is available for free to free
software developers. To the extent that this upsets you, they are succeeding.