humm... my point is that free software is what is today because all the people that worked and believed on it, and has nothing to do with laws and governments.
Do you really belive that? I mean, without laws, we couldn't keep software free, or pin down those that violate the license.
Can you give the most effective example of a situation where law was really important to free software?
Yes, a very obvious one, copyright law. It helps keeping software free if you use for example the GPL.
You can use gpl, if you want. Do you think it is really only a license? Don't you think it works better as a manifesto, or a icon? See, this is an ethic discussion, and ethics is not necessarily related to law.
No, this is not an ethics discussion, ethics can be broken in a whim without any major problems. Breaking laws is a bit harder. The same applies to manifestos.
Do you think that if GPL is considered ilegal, free software will stop? ;-)
To some extent yes, since the GPL keeps free software free. People can take for example BSD licensed software and make it non-free.
Anyway, you should understand that free-software exists with or WITHOUT laws.
This is wrong, since it is possible to make free-software completly illegal. Just think of laws like the DMCA, patents, etc.
Cheers.