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Comment by tedunangst | Hacker News Reader

It's funny that you mention libreadline. CLISP was not originally going to be GPL'd and only optionally depended on readline, but Stallman himself declared that even that made CLISP a derivative work. I happen to agree with your interpretation, but the author of the GPL does not.

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At the time, editline did not exist. Stallman's argument was that code which has functionality only when linked with GPL'd code is dependent upon that GPL'd code.

Stallman is not a lawyer, and just because he is the author of the early GPL does not mean he is correct regarding copyright law.

It's just like how the authors of the AGPL make insane unfounded claims about what you can or cannot do with AGPL-licensed software.

What Stallman claims doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the license and the law.

Indeed, this reminds me of all the OpenBSD discussions where Stallman tried to mark OpenBSD as a non-free operation system - fun fact: OpenBSD uses and suggests the ISC license, the most liberal of them all.

http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119750352332512&w...

I would say that stallmans claims do matter, because failure to comply will get you labeled as an Internet villain. The impact that may have on your business will depend on the nature of your business.

Considering the vast array of bizarre and offensive views held by Richard Stallman, I do not think disagreeing with him over one more small matter will bring any great harm.

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