Comment by Brian_K_White
18 hours ago
"If Microsoft misappropriates GPL code how exactly is that "stealing" from me, the user, of that code? I'm not deprived in any way."
Yes you are. You are just deprived of something you apparently don't recognize or value, but that doesn't make it ok.
The original author was also stolen from and that doesn't rely on your understanding or perception.
The original author set some terms. Therm were not money but they are terms exactly like money. They said "you can have this, and only price is you have to make the source, and the further right to redistribute, available to any user you hand a binary to.
Well MS handed you a binary and did not also hand you the source or the right to redistribute.
That stole from both you and the original author and me who might otherwise have benefited from your own child work. The fact that you personally apparently were never going to make use of something they owe you doesn't change the fact that they owe you, and the original author and me.
It is a tale as old as time, and one which no doubt all of us repeat at some point in our lives. There are hundreds of clichéd books, hundreds of songs, and thousand of letters that echo this sentiment.
We are rarely capable of valuing the freedoms we have never been deprived of.
To be privileged is to live at the quiet centre of a never-ending cycle: between taking a freedom for granted (only to eventually lose it), and fighting for that freedom, which we by then so desperately need.
And as Thomas Paine put it: "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it."