On May 16, 9:19 am, Ed Keith <e_...@yahoo.com> wrote: > --- On Sat, 5/15/10, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <l...@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> > wrote: > > >> But what about the “freedom” to take away > > other > > >> people’s freedom? Is that really “freedom”? > > > > Yes. > > > But that’s a “freedom” that non-GPL licences do not > > give you, that the GPL > > does. So which licence gives you more “freedoms”, > > again?
[ stuff snipped] > There is clearly some kind of communication problem here. Either were are > speaking different languages with some faulty transaction program > interviewing, or one of is is either stupid or senile (seems a bit early for > me, but it is possible); or you are being disingenuous. Lawrence is certainly being overly clever. He is somewhat technically correct, but is playing a shell game where he moves around who the potential "freedom" giver is and who the potential "freedom" receiver is. The problem is, you have to handle this sort of argument very carefully, or someone will come along and then point out (again, somewhat technically correctly) that copyright law restricts the "freedoms", and the GPL license only gives them out, so where's the problem? It's easy to lose sight of where the pea is, particularly when you were expecting straightforward communication rather than this sort of sophistry. When people in this thread previously said that permissive licenses give you the "freedom" to take away others' "freedoms", but the GPL does not, the "you" they are referring to is "a person who has received the software from someone else". When Lawrence is now saying that the GPL gives you the "freedom" to take away others' "freedoms" but other licenses do not, the "you" he is referring to is the "author of the software", who I think we all agree retains more "freedom" to restrict others' "freedoms" if he uses the GPL than if he uses a permissive license. So in this instance, the thing that disappeared under the shell where you thought it was and reappeared under a different shell was the very definition of the word "you". But don't feel bad; some of the thimbleriggers around here are quite accomplished, and very hard to catch out. Regards, Pat -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
