On 23 Mar 2005 at 20:21, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
I as many other free software believers would argue that the GPL is a necessary evil (ask any BSD believer). You know there is more than one kind of free software than GPL and it doesn't help with people ramming the GPL without qualification down the throat of anyone who asks.
Talking about "GPL zealots" doesn't help anything either.
Why does the term keep coming up again and again then? People get so fixated on there being this one single truth which just has to be true, because if it isn't then their nice comfortable world suddenly gets insecure.
People constantly forget that views on how software should be exchanged between people are belief systems, and as those systems harden they become religious in overtone. As usual, most people on this list will think I am spouting crap, but I think it's very easy to stop seeing the wood from the trees. Is the GPL or any form of software licensing more important than freeing software? No it isn't. What we all actually want, and need, is replacement of the legal support for computer software with something a lot better than a derivative of printing-press book law.
The GPL FAQ is infact based on answers from lawyers (Molgen I belive), and people who have better knowledge about the GPL then you at the FSF.
Lawyers will write what you ask them if you pay them so long as the view you ask for can be supported by a particular interpretation of the law. Just as equally, I could pay often the exact same lawyer to write my interpretation of the law.
The only thing is that the FSF doesn't pay lawyers. Eben Moglen works pro bono for the FSF. So please stop saying ridiculous things such as the FSF paying lawyers to give opinions which don't stand in court.
Paying need not be monetary, it's why lawyers do pro bono work. If I were extremely cynical, I would say that he is seeding avenues of future work though from what I have read of him, he is a conscientious man who probably genuinely believes his opinion is right. Nevertheless, it doesn't change my point - lawyers don't set the interpretation of law, courts do - so Moglen's opinion while possible is by no means as sacrosant as GPL believers would like it to be.
There's a part of me who would like to see the GPL fully tested in court with the FSF up against some very good corporate lawyers. Almost certainly the current legal position of the GPL would be weakened and a distributed sigh of disbelief would emanate from the GPL believers. The great and true GPL FAQ would need substantial parts rewording and perhaps Microsoft among others would start using unmodified GPLed DLL's in their products with no worry about "GPL contamination" as they would put it.
Of course, the majority of me recognises that that would be a bad idea overall as most of the power of the GPL comes from its perceived risk to proprietary code rather than its actual, but it would sure be nice to see some of that zealotry wiped off some people's faces.
Cheers, Niall