Rant on BSD vs GPL was [Good ol' BSD vs. GPL]

Ted Smith tedks at riseup.net
Wed Jan 7 09:24:25 PST 2015


On Wed, 2015-01-07 at 11:33 +0000, Cathal Garvey wrote:
> The GPL acknowledges this by forbidding suits within the scope of the 
> work (I think: GPL experts on-list?), preventing E3 from occurring. 
> Other licenses often take steps in this direction, but the
> ultra-short 
> "friendly and permissive" licenses usually don't, or do so in such a 
> terse and legally unenforceable way that they might as well not be.

IANAL. TINLA.

The GPLv3+ contains this sort of patent protection, as does I believe
the Apache license in later versions.


> Freedom is not merely defined in law but in experience, and simply 
> removing explicit limitations on freedom (copyleft licenses) does not 
> mean that the total freedom in the world has increased.

BSD advocates, I think, are not interested in total freedom in the
world. This is a CONSEQUENCE or OUTCOME of a choice, not the choice
itself.

I find frequently that the dispute between BSD and GPL advocates usually
boils down to consequentialist morals on the GPL side, and deontological
or rule-based morals on the BSD side. While a BSD advocate believes it
is immoral to restrict action in any way, regardless of consequence, a
GPL advocate believes it is irrelevant what actions are restricted or
allowed, but rather that the vital fact is the total freedom in the
world, or the consequence of whatever actions take place.




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