Re: GPL traitor !

[Alan Mackenzie]

In gnu.misc.discuss Rjack <user@example.net> wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>> In gnu.misc.discuss Rjack <user@example.net> wrote:
>>> Matt Assay of C-Net fame and one of cyberworld's *biggest* 
>>> supporters of the GPL is bailing out like he's Arlen Specter's 
>>> campaign manager:

>> Oh, you have a wonderful way of dramatising things, RJ!

>>> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10229817-16.html "I have spent 
>>> years advocating the GNU General Public License as the optimal 
>>> open-source license for commercial open source. Roughly nine 
>>> years after I first became a fan of the GPL, I think I've been 
>>> wrong.

>> It seems Matt has long misunderstood the GPL.  It was never 
>> intended to be optimal for "commercial open source", and most 
>> thinking people, including RMS, would agree that the Apache license
>>  is indeed better for this purpose.


> I seems that anyone in the World who disagrees with the FSF's
> interpretation of the GPL license and philosophy "misunderstands"
> the GPL. Please tell us more about "misunderstanding" the GPL since we
> are all too dumb to understand:

Not at all.  Plenty of sensible people who disagree with the FSF's
philosophy understand the GPL perfectly well - it's not difficult.  A
whole wodge of lawyers at Microsoft, for instance.  Possibly even
yourself.

> ******************************************************************
> Audience member: [...] in this new World, and you're talking about GPL
> going over to the next version, how do you see proprietary software
> businesses making a profit?
> 
> [54:00]
> 
> Richard Stallman: That's unethical, they shouldn't be making any
> money. I hope to see all proprietary software wiped out. That's what I
> aim for. That would be a World in which our freedom is respected. A
> proprietary program is a program that is not free. That is to say, a
> program that does respect the user's essential rights. That's evil. A
> proprietary program is part of a predatory scheme where people who
> don't value their freedom are drawn into giving it up in order to gain
> some kind of practical convenience. And then once they're there, it's
> harder and harder to get out. Our goal is to rescue people from this.
> *******************************************************************
> http://fsfe.org/projects/gplv3/bangalore-rms-transcript

<Sigh>, when are you going to understand that your hero RMS isn't a god?
For Richard Stallman, proprietary software companies' making a profit
just isn't important one way or the other.  Notice, that like most
politicians, he didn't really answer the question put to him.  What is
important to him is that these companies make their software non-free.

Anybody reading between the lines of that last quote would easily discern
that the GPL isn't intended to make things easy for "commercial open
source".

> Sincerely,
> Rjack :)

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).