🚀 go-pugleaf

 > > Sounds reasonable to me.  If you want to hoard software, you
 > > have to buy into the hoarder philosophy wholesale and hire a
 > > mess of lawyers.  On the other hand if you're willing to
 > > turn your software loose, then you can forget the lawyers
 > > and get on with writing more software.
 > 
 > What ever happened to the concept of compromise?

Hoarding free software is anathema to the FSF.  There can be no
compromise.

 > Is the world really destined to be run by extremists who
 > *know* they are right?

It already is.  Only when the situation reaches the point where
both sides see that further conflict is pointless, will there be
compromise.

 > I like to write software - I live for writing software.  I also
 > have this strange desire to support my family.  Sometimes the latter
 > desire may run counter to my moral philosophies, but I can't say that
 > it does when I'm trying to making a living selling binary-only 
 > distributions for $300.  People look at big closed corporations and
 > call them evil and then call everyone who sells software evil.
 > I'm the evil hoarder who doesn't release his source.

Some poeple do, I guess.  I don't.  I don't think selling
software is evil.  On the other hand if a company sells a broken
program without source, and says there's no warranty, and says I
can't disassemble the machine code, and says I have to pay them
to get the program fixed, and then says there's _still_ no
warranty...  well now, that's evil.

 > Yet that ignores the fact that I regularly release pieces of
 > my source in answer to net questions, that I release source
 > libraries to the net.  None of this matters you see, because
 > the world is divided into those who are hoarders and evil and
 > those who are not.  And since I don't give away source with my
 > binaries I fall into the first category.
 >
 > The world is not black and white.  It's not full of absolutes.
 > And extremism does nothing but piss people off.

The FSF has to deal with the cold realities of the world.  It
really makes little difference how much software you've given
away.  Software vendors have shown that they can't be trusted to
take free software and modify it and leave it free.  Thus the
necessity of the GPL.  The fact that you give away code doesn't
change that one bit.  You can't be trusted.  You can't be
trusted.  I can't be trusted.  Money talks.  What other option is
there other than the "extreme" one, to order to protect the
freedom of the software?

I can't take free software and add it to a proprietary program
and get a free program.  So why would anyone think they should be
able to take a free program and add some proprietary stuff and
get a proprietary program?  I don't see inflexibility and
extremism in the GPL, I see equity.

In all the arguments I've seen against the GPL, it has always
boiled down to software vendors trying to find a way to do what
they've always been doing, except this time they don't have to do
all the work.  TANSTAAFL.

I'm happy that there are two distinct classes of software.  I
think there's room in the market for both of them.  However, I
think turning free code into proprietary code is needless
predation.