Michael's musings

Fri, 27 Oct 2006

Forbes acknowledges GPL as significant

There was a recent article in Forbes magazine attacking the GPL and Richard Stallman. Of course, there was a response on slashdot:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/26/1622205

A colleague found the following, very astute response, which I'm copying here:

I consider the GPLv2 to be less free than the BSD license in precisely the same way as living in a country with a constitution and laws is less free than living in a country without them. Which of those two countries would you rather live in? I know which I'd rather live in. The GPL is a statement of the rules under which we are all free.

And the GPLv3's insistence that I be able to replace the GPL code in my Tivo with my own versions seems to me like a restriction much along the same lines. Whether this is an encroachment on freedom that the GPL should be concerned with is open to debate. But that restricting my ability to do this is an encroachment on my freedom is not open to debate.

• by Omnifarious (11933)

I could not agree more. I've always assumed that the editors of Forbes magazine were in favour of free markets. Well, perhaps if one remembers the "Steve Forbes 10% tax" one might remember that Forbes is a magazine for rich people. (His tax would not actually have taxed capital gains!)