Comment by teekert
2 days ago
As much as RMS meant for the world, he’s also a pretty petty person. He’s about freedom but mostly about user freedom, not creators freedom. I also went through such a phase but using words like “evil” is just too black and white. I don’t think he is a nice person to be around.l, judging from some podcasts and videos.
If there is one thing Stallman knows well is the way he uses words and I can assure you if he calls something "evil" that is exactly the word he meant to use.
> user freedom, not creators freedom
In his view users are the creators and creators are the users. The only freedom he asks you to give up is the freedom to limit the freedom of others.
RMS asks you to give something up: Your right to share a thing you made, under your conditions (which may be conditions even the receiving party agree on), nobody is forced in this situation, and then he calls that evil. I think that is wrong.
I love FOSS, don't get me wrong. But people should be able to say: I made this, if you want to use it, it's under these condition or I won't share it.
Again, imho the GPL is a blessing for humanity, and bless the people that choose it freely.
> RMS asks you to give something up: Your right to share a thing you made, under your conditions (which may be conditions even the receiving party agree on), nobody is forced in this situation, and then he calls that evil. I think that is wrong.
This is not true, though. As a copyright holder, you are allowed to license your work however you wish, even if it's under for example GPL-3.0-or-later or whatever. You can license your code outside of the terms of the GPL to a particular user or group of users for example for payment.
Really, it's only when the user agrees to abide by the license that you'd have to give access to source code when asked, for example.
> I love FOSS, don't get me wrong. But people should be able to say: I made this, if you want to use it, it's under these condition or I won't share it.
And they can. Whether that wins one any friends or not is another matter.
Oh and bless the people that won't use anything but GPL software.
Don't bless the people that think you are evil for not applying the GPL to your creation.
> user freedom, not creators freedom
Creators are not creators, they're also users. There's a very solid chance that a better world for everyone would be achieved if freedoms for all users would be bullet proof. Every user should be able to modify and repair all their hardware and software without creator involvement.
And we just don't think about all the software that is then not being created because people feel it's immediately everyone's property and so won't even bother?
Sure, we can copy software, so it's not like they are taking your house. But "they" may be taking your livelihood.
Ok, objectively perhaps the world would be better, but we can't know. And opinions don't mean anything. What matters is individuals and being fair to them, whatever society grows from that is just what we have.
That said, if we ever go multi-planet, and there is a planet with no copyright and everything is GPL, I'd check it out and imagine I'd feel quite at home there.
> Sure, we can copy software, so it's not like they are taking your house. But "they" may be taking your livelihood.
With GenAI that's starting to happen with anyway.
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