🚀 go-pugleaf

It took me quite a long time to work out exactly what the FSF philosophy
was, and since I'm not an FSF'er please excuse me if I still haven't got
it quite right:

I believe the goal of the FSF is most definitely *not* to promote their
software to the widest audience, or to encourage more and better software
to be written, but is simply and quite narrowly to encourage software to
be made non-proprietary -- no software should be sold -- programmers should
raise their income from selling their services, not their programs.

To this end, the GNU License works by making a trade: if you want Gnu
software, you *BUY* it from FSF by paying for it with your own software.

One misunderstanding the FSF guys cleared up for me when I spoke to them
was that you can take Gnu software, and make your own changes to it - and
*keep it to yourself*.  I didn't realise this.  What they insist on is
not that you give away everything you write with Gnu code in it, but that
if you give it away or sell it to even one person, you must make it
available to *everyone* under the Gnu license.

The guys I spoke to over a meal at Mary Cheung's seemed to think that the
FSF stance typified a 'free market economy' :-) (Quite the reverse from
the Marxism they're normally accused of) ... well, if that's true, I
think a real free market economy is going to mean that people will start
producing software which is *truly* free, in rival to the Gnu project.
A sad waste of effort, but I'm sure it will happen.  (Indeed, it already
has - the Bsd4.3 people went out of their way to avoid Gnu code when
shaking off the last AT&T shackles recently)

graham
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