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Re: Social Contract

Steve Lamb wrote:

Christopher Nelson wrote:

My biggest problem with BSD-style licenses is that someone can take your
work, use it, and then restrict other's access to their improvements.


    So the GPL restricts their freedom to do just that.  That has been my main
point from the onset.  It is not free.  It is just different.


I work for a company as a programmer, I'll have to live with it or choose
another field, but when I'll write something for the community I want it and it's descendants to stay Free. 

    I agree.  That is why the rare pieces of software I write and have
released have been GPLed.  But I'm not about to say I did it because I believe
in freedom.  I did it because I liked the restrictions on freedom the GPL
provided.  I did it because I felt it an appropriate and acceptable way to pay
for the efforts of others who have done similar with their work.  I am using
the fruits of their labor, I'm allowing them to use the fruits of mine...  On
my terms.  And those terms ain't free.


As stated earlier, the BSD-licence requires, among other things, that:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Thus it's *not* truly free either. I can't do whatever I want with it, and there are requirements. "Free" is not a qualitative property. It's a quantitative property. The BSD-license is a bit more free than GPL, which in turn is far more free than, I guess, all commercial software licenses.
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