Re: using GPL api to be used in a properietary software

[David Kastrup]

Stefaan A Eeckels <tengo@DELETEMEecc.lu> writes:

> Tell me to respect the wishes of the author, and I'm all with you,
> even if these wishes seem - at first sight - rather outlandish.  But
> this lunatic fight to get the scope of copyright extended, by
> exactly those people who originally wanted to abolish all forms of
> copyright, is one of the saddest quixotic battles I know of.

You don't get it.  The FSF is not fighting for the laws that give the
GPL teeth.  But while this insanity prevails, nothing is gained by
pretending it isn't.

If you want no defense against people unilaterally taking your work
and turning it as proprietary as the laws allow, use the BSD licences.

The explicit and expressed purpose of the GPL is to make the code it
covers not be subvertible in this manner.

People that are clamoring against the consequences of the GPL are
clamoring against the consequences of copyright laws.  Lobby for
weakening the copyright laws, and the GPL will lose its teeth along
with the other licences.

I'd certainly welcome a world where "derivative work" lawsuits were
not, in court, repeatedly and decidedly enforced even for trivial
cases akin to linking.

But the ongoing practice does not support Alexander's fantasies.  And
as long as it doesn't, nothing is gained by pretenting that the GPL
should in some manner have less validity than other licences.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum