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Re: Problem with GPLv3 FAQ about linking with Visual C++


From: Hyman Rosen
Subject: Re: Problem with GPLv3 FAQ about linking with Visual C++
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:58:31 -0500
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091204 Thunderbird/3.0

Raymond T. Nimmer wrote:
http://www.ipinfoblog.com/archives/licensing-law-issues-gpl-30-and-third-party-patent-owners.html
    It is a new and highly restrictive license.

It's restrictive for people who don't want to respect free
software and seek to use free software as a convenience for
themselves while aiming to deny those freedoms to their
users. Good.

An intriguing part of GPL 3.0 is how it singles out particular practices
or parts of an industry for special treatment.

It singles out those practices which serve to deny users
the four freedoms.

So why does the Free Software Foundation (FSF) dislike an arrangement
that protects users of open source works from patent claims by
Microsoft? It is not clear to me that the reason is anything other than
a visceral dislike of Microsoft as epitomizing the so-called proprietary
software realm and the fact that this arrangement allows Microsoft to
participate more in the open source without adopting all premises set
out by FSF.

Because such arrangements allow protections to be given only to
some users, not to all of them. This means that someone could
use the combination of GPL and a patent to deny some users the
freedoms which the GPL gives while still making use of GPLed
code. This has nothing to do with disliking a particular company.
(It is true that Stallman does dislike Microsoft in this way,
leading him to erroneous dislike of Mono and C#).

So Nimmer doesn't much like the GPL. But this article doesn't
distinguish between dislike of the GPL and effectiveness of
the GPL. And it does nothing to address the "double-speak"
question - the GPL speaks clearly on behalf of its goals. The
only "freedom" it seeks to deny is the ability to deny users
the four freedoms.


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