Re: Matt Assay Tells the Truth

[Chris Ahlstrom]

After takin' a swig o' grog, Hyman Rosen belched out
  this bit o' wisdom:

> 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.

And often, it is developers that are users.

> 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.

The GPL is what has made Free software possible.

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