From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,3e26dfa741e64e5f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!nntp-out.svc.us.xo.net!nntp1-feeder.SJ.svc.us.xo.net!newsfeed.concentric.net!sjc1.nntp.concentric.net!newsfeed-3001.bay.webtv.net!news.moat.net!news.linkpendium.com!news.linkpendium.com!newsfeed.pacific.net.au!nasal.pacific.net.au!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: GNAT GPL 2005 Edition is now available From: David Trudgett Organization: Very little? References: <432919be$0$10539$4d4eb98e@read.news.fr.uu.net> Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.4 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:CCNUaLNGIA3LWRS7dXGvSj5ht0E= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 11:22:55 +1000 NNTP-Posting-Host: 61.8.44.152 X-Complaints-To: news@pacific.net.au X-Trace: nasal.pacific.net.au 1127179653 61.8.44.152 (Tue, 20 Sep 2005 11:27:33 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 11:27:33 EST Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:4929 Date: 2005-09-20T11:22:55+10:00 List-Id: Hi Jeff, Jeff Creem writes: > > I think you need to go read the materials at gnu.org because > freedom/free in their terms does not mean what you want it to > mean. I think you're misunderstanding what I am saying, and to some extent I have not been very clear myself in some wording I have chosen here and there. I also think I know perfectly well what Stallman and the FSF want. They want everyone to write Free Software. They would even like to force people to write Free Software if they want to *use* Free Software. There are several different but interrelated points to make about that. I will enumerate some of them here: 1. There is a moral viewpoint and a legal viewpoint. I have been dipping into both ends (hence some confusion, perhaps), but I am principally speaking from the moral viewpoint, which is at a higher level of abstraction from the legal. Hence my use of the word '*should*' in at least one place that I recall. 2. What RMS and the FSF *want*, what the GPL *says*, and how it gets interpreted in courts of -violence- I mean law, are three different things. All of those three things are different from what is morally right. It is *never* morally right, for instance, to use violence to force or coerce the actions of others, no matter whether one's "rights" are being ignored or infringed. Copyright law, if taken seriously, does precisely that: it says, "I will steal your possessions, abuse you, throw you in prison to be abused by violent criminals, and probably ruin your career if you use something that I have created in a way I do not wish." Only a sociopath or a sociopathic corporation would say such a thing, yet that is what copyright law is all about. 3. It is one thing for software to be Free, but quite another for humans to be free. Software has no right or claim to be Free. Software is an abstraction, it is not a being, it can have no rights. But human beings have the right to freedom simply by virtue of being human. This means that there is no basis whatsoever for Free Software unless it is grounded in human freedom. It is the *human being's* right to freedom, and nothing else, that legitimises Free Software. Free Software that makes humans unfree is therefore a contradiction in terms. 4. Taking a Free Software application created by someone else and making it one's own exclusive property (by, for example, withholding source code and charging for binary licences), is *theft*. It is *major* theft if it is done in such a way that the proprietary version "kills off" the Free version by force of law or market. There is a moral law against theft. 5. Using a compiler/run-time to produce software unrelated to that compiler/run-time, is not theft. It is using the compiler/run-time as intended by the technical nature of the compiler/run-time. This is not theft, but using a tool in the intended way. 6. A software author may specify any conditions of use he/she prefers, but has no *right* to do so, because no one can have a right to do something that cannot be (morally) done. Think of your favourite offensive example here, such as, "Only to be used by whites." (The fact that there may be statutes restricting this in a particular time and place is irrelevant, since we are discussing things at a moral level here.) It is obvious that one cannot have a *right* to use violence against other people (including via the proxy of the "law"), and since the use of violence is the only way you will be able to prevent people from doing what you do not want them to do, you cannot have a "right" to thus prevent them. All you can do is express your wishes and expect that by and large people will follow them (if they see merit in them -- something which is unlikely in the example cited above). 7. Therefore, an author may express the desire that his run-time code not be included or linked into any non-Free binary. The intent of this wish is to force users of the compiler to licence their own work under a particular licence. The intent is not to protect one's own Free Software, but to coerce the actions of others. Thus, the intent is essentially violent, as it is impossible to force the actions of others without recourse to the use of violence. 8. The author's expressed desire in item 7 is therefore based on an immoral premise, and consequently there is no moral duty to respect the desire, the ends of which are immoral (just as there would be no moral duty to respect the author's wishes for only white people to use his compiler). Of course, one may still respect the author's wishes out of courtesy (especially if there are viable alternatives to using the author's compiler), but there is no moral compunction to do so. Whether or not there is a legal compunction in a particular time and place is irrelevant to this discussion. > (Or at least you misunderstood what I meant when i used the > quoted "Free") It is the stated position of the FSF that software > should be "free". What they mean by that is not that developers should > be free to do what they want. Yes, precisely what I was saying above: they want to make software "Free" at the expense of human freedom. This is a contradiction in terms. Software can have no rights. Only humans can. > What the FSF wants is for end users to be free to get acess to > source code for which they have binaries and for them to be free to > give the source to others. This is a laudable desire, but, as everyone learns at mother's knee, the ends do *not* justify the means. Actually, the ends *are* the means. > Several years ago they changed the acroynm for the Library GNU > Public License (LGPL) to Lesser GNU Public License because the FSF > believes it to be less "free". This is pure sophistry on their part. There is no way that a GPL'ed library can be more "Free" than an LGPL'ed library. The only difference is what it forces other people to do with their own code. The intent of using the GPL on libraries is *viral*, to use the common term. GPL on non-library code (ordinary applications) is *not* viral, and is perfectly safe for anyone to use, by the way (just for the record -- I know you know that). There are problems with the GPL. One is that it is not suitable for library code because of its "viral" nature, which it needs to protect normal applications. So, that's right: viral GPL'ed library code is *not* morally acceptable, since the intent is *not* to protect one's own work, but to coerce others. Now, how effective that coercion *is* will depend on various factors, such as alternatives available, but _coercion_ it remains. Another problem is that there is not always a distinction between application and library code. The compiler/run-time issue is a small example, but a bigger example is the world of languages like Common Lisp. Common Lisp programs work just like "libraries", so there is no real distinction between "application" and "library" in Common Lisp. For this reason, I should review my use of the GPL on my noughts and crosses game in Common Lisp. > You also said > >> As a final comment, I would add that I am not against the GPL in any >> way except where it is used to gratuitously limited other people's >> freedoms. The purpose of the GPL is to protect the freedom of >> software, not to force other people to produce free software. A >> compiler is a special class of program that allows the GPL to be >> abused, because the *purpose* of a compiler is to facilitate the > > This is not correct. The purpose of the GPL IS to force people to > write free software. Actually, *your* statement is incorrect. Sorry to be so contrary. Only the GPL applied to a library is intended to coerce others. David -- David Trudgett http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/ The whole system of domination might unravel if the idea of taking matters into one's own hands spreads its evil tentacles. -- Noam Chomsky