🚀 go-pugleaf

Jim ADCOCK writes:
> In article <9101161825.AA09469@mole.ai.mit.edu| rms@AI.MIT.EDU (Richard Stallman) writes:
> 
> [... too much stuff ...]
> 
> Programmers -- please do not allow your software to be used for such
> divisive ends -- please do not allow your software to be distributed
> under the GNU licensing restrictions.
>
> [... And still more stuff ...]
>
> Please do not be deceived by Stallman's attempts to label his
> actions "freedom."   Please do not allow Stallman's licenses to be
> applied to your software -- doing so does not make your software
> more accessible to most software programmers, but rather prevents
> most software programmers from using your creations. 

My apologies to the group for posting this to help-g++ rather than
gnu.misc.discuss, but I couldn't help but reply to Jim's post.

Jim's arguments do not really apply. The FSF licenses only restrict
people's ability to restrict your access to the sources of the
software you are using.

You are free to do with the software what you like, as long as you
don't restrict other people's freedom. Promoting freedom of software
also means that you can't use free software inside your proprietary
software.

It is obvious that Jim from Microsoft is very invested (probably
literally as well as figuratively) in the idea of restricting people's
use of software for profit. He balks at the idea of not being able to
use a piece of free software in a way that restricts his end-user's
freedom. Too bad.

To try to present that as a plea for freedom is true hypocrisy.

An example that illustrates: I recently found a file system bug in the
operating system I am using. Having found the cause (a buggy routine
in a system library), I was able to effect a fix by replacing the
buggy routine with one that worked from the net. *However*, I couldn't
fix the binaries easily (because I didn't have the sources). I
actually *did* end up patching the binaries (by disassembling them and
findind out what to change), but it wasn't my idea of a fun time. The
fact is that the software vendor had me at their mercy even though I
was probably far more capable of fixing my problem in a timely fashion
than they themselves were... They had, through their licensing,
restricted my freedom to read and change the source.

FSF software, on the other hand, is infinitely superior simply because
you have the source. Making sources available to hundreds of bright
intelligent software people all over the net to use/modify and send in
patches insures that in a very short time you have sources that are
ported to hundreds of different machines and that you have software
that is *very high quality*.

Enough said,

			---Kayvan

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