Re: [tlug] Proprietary derivatives of FLOSS and other absurdities [was: Why Hollywood does break foreign films ?]

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Curt Sampson writes:
 
 > On 2013-08-14 13:05 +0900 (Wed), Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > 
 > > The purpose of copyleft is to ensure that free code remains free code,
 > > even after somebody else incorporates it in another program.
 > 
 > Err....no? I wasn't sure exactly what "copyleft" is, so I looked it up on
 > Wikipedia:
 > 
 >     Copyleft...is the practice of using copyright law to offer the right
 >     to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring
 >     that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work.
 > 
 > So more or less the same thing as the GPL, then? As I think we've all
 > agreed here before, the GPL is explicitly designed to *limit* the
 > freedoms you have (compared to something like a BSD or MIT license) with
 > regard to the GPL'd code.

Correct.  However, the "free" in "free code" is an absolute, defined
by RMS's "four freedoms", with the GPL being a least free license that
is compatible with that definition.  Another way to put it, is that
under (US) copyright law, BSD provides the maximum amount of freedom
concerning the *copy* in front of you, while the GPL guarantees
freedom for the (abstract) "Work" in question, or alternatively for
all copies that will ever be made.

This is not to say that I agree with RMS that there is an absolute
standard of software freedom such that you can't say that BSD is "more
free" than GPL.  BSD *does* provide more freedom IMO.  But this notion
of "absolute freedom" is generally agreed to be useful (whether by
that, perhaps misleading, name as in the Debian Free Software
Guidelines, or by a different name, as in the Open Source Definition).

 > This is the main reason I've come to like the GPL, its faux-freedom and
 > its associated popularity amongst the open-source crowd. When I put
 > my business hat on, it allows me to build products where I can give
 > out some part of the source, reaping the benefits of that, yet still
 > prevent any competitors from doing what I can do, which is distribute
 > proprietary, enhanced versions of the software based on that source.

Yup.  It's interesting to reflect on the fact that Bill Gates never
figured that out, ditto Sun Microsystems.  But IBM did.