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Comment by inian | Hacker News Reader

"Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire page are permitted provided this notice is preserved." - Stallman's blog is not giving me the freedom to distribute the blog as please. It is infringing on my freedom.

Anyone else find this ironic / hilarious?

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Why would that be ironic ? It's ensuring others receive the same freedom for the copy you make of the page, which is also the essence of the GPL license, and the whole philosophy of the FSF.

My issue is with the no-modification part. This is the exact argument he gives for not using some software - that users are not free to modify the software and hence it is malicious.

Have you heard of the FSF? It's not called the free everything foundation for a reason. There's no irony or contradiction here.

Your freedom to do what exactly? Misrepresenting Stallman's views? Preventing your readers to copy and distribute the page you gave them?

I can say the same argument about commercial software. They do not want you to modify their software for you to inject say malware in them. Just cos they don't want you to do that, it doesn't make their software not free.

Stallman is an advocate of copyleft, which that condition falls in line with. It's similar to the GPL license that has to be shipped verbatim with GPL code and places restrictions on how the project can be distributed (eg source must be available upon request).

What you're asking to do is akin to copyfree (eg BSD) which is a different type of "free".

From what I see, copyleft strictly allows for modification too, as long as the derived work also is licensed under the same terms. His clause prevents any modification.

He allows free copying with conditions. Those conditions don't see harsh given most sites don't even permit what RMS has allowed - even modifications aside.

It really sounds more like you have an axe to grind with RMS himself rather than with the terms of his website.

Surely you still have freedom to distribute it as you wish. He just wants it to make sure you attribute the source, which ethically you should anyway.

If the post were GNU Public Licensed, which additionally forces you to release any text that quotes his text under the same license, then I'd be inclined to agree with you.

If you find Stallman's views unacceptable/laughable, that Copyright notice will not help you in your cause

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