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Comment by 5e92cb50239222b | Hacker News Reader

Those "unfree licenses" are the reason you're not forced to use Windows on desktops/laptops/phones/servers/toasters/supercomputers (it does none of these things well even now, imagine the world we would have if it didn't have any competition at all).

GPL puts the user's freedom first. Every developer is mostly a user anyway, unless you're writing absolutely everything from scratch like they do in SerenityOS. So I like that stance very much. If you don't, nobody is forcing you to interact with GPLed software in any way.

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Exactly. Copyleft is more about "freedom for society" as a whole, ensuring all users (which includes developers) retain this version of freedom. Permissive licenses are more about "freedom" for the individual to do whatever they want, with the potential to take freedoms away from others as a result. I think the stupid anti-gpl sentiment mostly comes from American idealisms of freedom, and developer selfishness, but that's just imo. The GPL still lets you do whatever you want in the privacy of your own computer, but when you put that GPLed software into the public, you need to ensure that you give the same freedoms to everyone else to have within their own computers as well.

I think that's much more noble and kind. But as long as it's free software, I'll still use it and be happy it is, regardless of the license. And tbh it'd be nice if the small, loud minority of BSD lovers, GPL despisers would shut up. They give the BSD crowd a terrible look.

>Those "unfree licenses" are the reason you're not forced to use Windows on desktops/laptops/phones/servers/toasters/supercomputers (it does none of these things well even now, imagine the world we would have if it didn't have any competition at all).

BS, i use FreeBSD and no one ever forced me to use Windows, Linux on the Desktop does everything right?

>GPL puts the user's freedom first.

No it's free promotion for the FSF

>scratch like they do in SerenityOS

Yes and they chose a good license (BSD2)

> No it's free promotion for the FSF

They deserve the promotion, because they created useful software.

> BS, i use FreeBSD and no one ever forced me to use Windows

At some point, Windows was everywhere, you couldn't hide from it. Now, Linux provides a strong competition, forcing even Microsoft to include it into Windows. BSD, instead, served as free labor for Apple, who created a walled garden for users.

What exactly do you want to do with the code that GPL prevents you from?

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