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

[grarpamp]

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 12:24 PM, Ted Smith <tedks at riseup.net> wrote:
> 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

Probably because their model and vision is different, they're
not really out to modify the world beyond saying "here you
go, it's free", only out to modify the code, so they've little
interest in legal longtexts or lawyers.

>> terse and legally unenforceable way that they might as well not be.
>
> The GPLv3+ contains this sort of patent protection

Section 10, last paragraph, last part. Don't know if that has been tested
in court as other parts have been in the news. And all of paragraph 11,
which grants patents.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

>> 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.

> boils down to consequentialist morals on the GPL side, and deontological
> or rule-based morals on the BSD side.

Yes, depends on definition of freedom. Unfortunately GPL and BSD people
seem define that differently.