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Comment by icebraining | Hacker News Reader

I think you if target a specific organization or movement, you should put more effort into portraying their position fairly if you want to be taken in good faith. The Free Software movement doesn't just say "GPL increases freedom", it has a whole Philosophy section which is easily available at the GNU website, describing why they think the Four Freedoms are essential and override the others.

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I'm quite familiar with the various writings on the topic, and if there is an in-depth examination of the various trade-offs involved with Free Software then I have not read it. Much of it seems, quite frankly, rather dismissive.

> I think you if target a specific organization or movement, you should put more effort into portraying their position fairly

I think that's not an unfair point. I have commented out this sentence until such a time I have written a more extensive article on it that can be linked. I also don't really want to focus on the details of specific examples with this, but rather on the bigger picture (I was very hesitant to include it as an example at all, as it's not a debate well known outside of the programming community; I may change my mind and remove it altogether).

> I have not read it

Then try reading instead of typing, especially https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.en.html

I have read that. I have read most things I could find on the FSF and GNU websites about this years ago already, and again several weeks ago. And I think that's exactly the kind of casual dismissiveness I'm talking about which barely even recognizes that there are any trade-offs involved at all, much less address them.

The introductory philosophic essay lays it out very clearly:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html

> we should perform a cost-benefit analysis on behalf of society as a whole, taking account of individual freedom as well as production of material goods.

You cannot say in good faith that the essays fail to recognise or address the existence of trade-offs. Please take note.

Given that statement, would you be surprised to hear that FSF has multiple time stated that GPL is a strategy with benefits and drawbacks and not an end goal in itself? Similar they see permissive licenses as positive thing, but not the optimal strategy in many cases. It depend on the project, the situation, the authors, the community and so on.

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