My view on the GPL is that it's freedom-preserving, like how a law forbidding the enslavement of people is freedom-preserving, even though it technically restricts a freedom. That's why I look more favourably on GPL software than software with a so-called 'permissive' license.
This and similar arguments in this thread work on the same logic that frames software piracy as theft. It’s the fallacy of treating software as a tangible thing that, when copied, is taken away from someone and altered irreversibly.
That's ridiculous. The GPL explicitly allows people to make copies.
What many free software advocates actually want is a world without copyright on software. It's copyright that frames copying as stealing. In a world with copyright, the only way to counter that is copyleft. The fact GPL can also enforce inclusion of source code is a nice side effect of copyleft. But ultimately what we want is a world where software is shared, treated as knowledge and not as a product.
MIT style licences are just not good enough. That software could still end up in some copyright protected proprietary product one day and then, yes, someone could accuse me of "stealing" their property, which contains our software.
> What many free software advocates actually want is a world without copyright on software.
Some of them sure. The subset of them who are GPL advocates are simply confused though. GPL is not possible in a world without copyright. In a world without copyright I can release software, which can be written from the ground up or be based on something open source, doesn’t matter, and not share the code with anyone. Just the binary. I can also create AWS based on open source software and nothing like AGPL will stop me from providing proprietary services based on it.
And the reason I pointed to the fallacy is that multiple people in this thread suggest that making a proprietary product based on open source software constitutes taking something away from users of this software. This is illogical. They still have the original. The only person who loses in this situation is the original author, not the users.
You and the author appear to be the same guy. To be sure, the piece itself is an academic exercise hypothesizing a world in which the MIT license were law. And in such a world, the GPL gestapo would continue railing against opaque binaries even if those binaries were shameless but legal ripoffs of someone's hard work.
If I took emacs, modified it to be thread-safe, and distributed it as an opaque binary, John Q. Emacs User retains his thread-unsafe version but now knows there's something better out there which he can't iterate on. You can say this knowledge isn't a real "loss," but that would be dismissing the concept of opportunity cost.
So you’re fine with software provided as opaque binaries without source code or only as SaaS? Because without copyright you’re going to get more of that and no licence is going to stop that.
No, of course I'm not ok with that! But trying to get rid of copyright for software and make access to source code a right is a huge task. That's why the GPL is a pragmatic solution. The GPL is something we can use today to build a foundation of free software and make the idea of software freedom normal and expected. This smooths the way towards a future where we don't need the GPL, but we've got a long way to go yet.
Licences like MIT do absolutely nothing up further this goal. They don't even try to do it today even though we know it can be done. It seems convenient for software you might use now, but to contribute to it? It doesn't give developers any guarantee that their work will be received as free software by future users. You're essentially working for corporations for free. I want my work to be available for everyone.
And even the threat of that (and *GPL’s viral nature) makes it INCREDIBLY unlikely legal teams allow employees to even use binaries of the code on their workstations. Of course nothing is actually stopping them, and it would be hard to prove it if they did, but there is at least some semblance of a threat.
MIT and similar are simply roundabout ways to make it public domain.
I care a great deal for the GPL, but I'd be fine with copyright if it wasn't so stupidly long. The reason I care about the GPL is my belief in an informed public. As far as I'm concerned, withholding vital information (like a list of ingredients or source code) from the public should be a criminal offence.
Whilst yes, you could technically say 'well, if the user wants to know what this software is doing, they can just disassemble it', I'd consider that malicious compliance. It's like listing ingredients by their scientific names (like 'Arachis Hypogaea' instead of 'peanut').
