Darren Benham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > The GPL does not restrict my rights. It protects my rights, and the > > rights of everyone else, by preventing people from being able to steal > > the code and release it in binary-only form. This is an excellent > > thing, and highlights one serious flaw in the BSD license, for > > instance. > That is your opinion (and the opinion of most of us) but it's still not the > "fact" you make it out to be. GPL *does* restrict your rights. If you > found a kewl foobar program but wanted to put the xforms front end to it, > you can't. Well, you can, but then you can't distribute it to anyone,
This is the fault of the xforms people for not making it truly Free; don't try to pin that on the GPL. BTW, we do have GPL code that is linked to xforms in Debian: LyX. > anywhere. Your right to use the xforms library is restricted. That's part The xforms people make that restriction. > of the mess with KDE. Many people objected to KDE because the chose a > non-free library to work with but what got it pulled was the linking of > those GPL'd programs to this non-free library even though THEIR source was > or would have been free. This is Qt's fault for not making a free library. Surely we should not blame GPL for somebody else's licensing mistakes? > Sure, the GPL restricts somebody's freedom to use any part of that code in > their proprietary software and that's what you want... And you accept the This is not a restriction, it's a benefit. You are forgetting that proprietary software robs us of freedom. The GPL is ensuring that the greedy people out there can't rob us of our freedoms. > X's license is more free but has the undesirable affect of allowing it to > let people use Free code, improve free code and not be forced to return it > to the community... Which means that in the end, it's a lot less free, doesn't it.
