Re: The sad decline of copyleft software licenses? :(

[Jean Louis]

* Marinus Savoritias <marinus.savoritias@disroot.org> [2020-09-22 18:42]:
> I was actually have been thinking about it a lot lately. Because as you said
> the copyleft licenses are in decline and for me it feels increasingly like I
> am one against many.
> 
> As to your first question the arguments I mainly hear are two:
> 
> 1. The minority says that GPL requires you to keep the same license if you
> fork. That isn't heard much from my side. And I wouldn't count it that much.
> Since the people that usually say it want to close source stuff or that GPL
> is communistic. Yes this people exist sadly.

We are varieties of people, and not each of humans is capable to read,
or read and understand the licesne, or read and understand the legal
terms, implications and consequences of a license. It is simply not in
capacity of each person to understand. It is also not a real purpose
of the license for everybody to understands it, what matters is that
they share the software, modify and enjoy it.

Those programmers who cannot understand legalities should rather get
third party opinions and advices.

> 2. The second criticism that I usually hear is much more serious to me. The
> say that I can't easily link GPL to anything else unless I check the
> license. And even then I end up changing the license of something else. Even
> if they don't want it.

Be practical, when you have other specific need to link software, why
not just ask for opinion from FSF licensing or other person who can
help you like Eben Moglen, so when you have legal issue, ask legal
people to help you, don't assume that average programmer knows
legalities.

> 1. Is FSF and GNU as a whole happy with the current situation? We
> technically have more Free Software than ever. But the Copyleft and user
> abuse is as high as it has ever been.

I am from Europe, now in East Africa, I can tell you that all movies,
music, software is freely distributed, including sold on street, and I
am gladly purchasing movies duplicated on DVDs, and all kinds of
softwar is just copied onto computers like any type of proprietary or
GNU/Linux distributions are distributed without taking care of any
license, and any consequences of any enforcements, so by principle
that is type of society I would like to be in, I would not like that I
am spied on by governments or that license holders enforce it on me,
be it proprietary authors or copyleft authors.

Purpose of copyleft is not to enforce licensing terms, but to have
people enjoy free software. So if average African sells me GNU/Linux
distribution, there is no way that I can ask from such seller not even
a receipt, as they simply may not have a receipt, unspoken of asking
to provide me a source code by request or to respect the GNU GPL in
full. What matters is sharing, not enforcing. I do not feel abused if
they cannot give me source code, and if I would be interested, they
would probably try to find it for me.

Now I could assume a position that as user, I am abused here, or I can
think I am in free country in respect to software and media, and that
is how I feel.

> 2. Is FSF and GNU the center of thing anymore? Do we want it to be? Because
> I can tell you that there are Copyleft Licenses outside of GNU. Few but
> exist. And there are developers that left GNU for some reason but still work
> on Copyleft software. And of course the young developers that haven't heard
> of FSF or GNU. Or don't want/bother to join.

It is good to be specific, generalized statements don't help.

Jean