🚀 go-pugleaf

Currently we don't let people turn our software into proprietary
software.  Some people consider our policy "taking away freedom".  But
freedom to do what?  Only the freedom to be a software hoarder and
undermine the freedom of others.

Thus, the question is whether we defend freedom best by trying to
prevent others from taking it away, or by passively letting everyone
else do whatever they want.

Some people are pacifists; they believe in being peaceful even to
murderers, rapists or tyrants.  It would be fully consistent for a
pacifist to believe in putting software in the public domain.

But I'm not a pacifist.  (Most of you are not pacifists either.)  I
think it makes sense to have policemen try to stop or catch murderers,
and armies or revolutions try to stop or catch tyrants, even if they
have to shoot.  Likewise, though on a different scale of intensity, I
think it makes sense to use the weapons of software hoarding (such as
copyright) against hoarders to prevent hoarding.  Think of this as
economic sanctions--offering aid in exchange for progress in
recognizing particular human rights.

If that means we lose business, that's ok.  We also lose business when
we refuse to trade with South Africa or Iraq.  The purpose of the GNU
project is not to maximize the amount of use of GNU software.  It is
to promote freedom.

The example of X Windows shows what would happen without the copyleft.
Most users who get X Windows get just a binary.  They can't get the
source for the version they are running.  The MIT source may not
interoperate with it, since it may not contain the changes needed for
the particular operating system in use.  The result is that X Windows
is not free for most users.  (I myself have had this problem.)  And
many improvements made to X Windows are kept proprietary and do not
get back to the community.  GNU software avoids this problem, while
being nonetheless well accepted.  This shows that the copyleft is
working.  It would be silly for us to drop our sanctions now.