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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

Well,

Whatever one may think of him, it is hard not to see Richard Stallman as prophetic in these regards (see "the right to read", etc). Gnu and the General Public License were efforts to deal with the kinds of software "unfreedoms" that have been creeping over the years (copyrights, patents, trademarks, walled gardens, controlled compiler, etc, etc).

Free software still has many warts and problems but if you are concerned with the many ways that software unfreedom is making inroads, you might consider trying to improve a free project as a way of fighting back.

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As an added note: If you want to develop software for an ideological goal in addition to a practical one then you really need to be using the GPL license rather than anything like the BSD license.

Otherwise your code can simply be co-opted to build platforms which are very much closed (see OSX/BSD).

In fact it should really be argued that GPL isn't good enough and you should be using AGPL which also gives rights to users who use the program on a networked basis.

Is there such a thing: an ideological vs a practical one? I understand the OP's concern as related to the freedom of software he writes. Where is here the split between ideology and practical?

The OP's question by the way, reminds me of this discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3802516 , in which some argue against the GPL as "unfair" and ruining their day because it prevents usage in walled gardens (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803492).

Would it be more pragmatic to keep the discussion on HN going instead of developing evasive concepts?

The GNU system was originally designed mostly from an ideological standpoints. Stallman and others wanted to use a UNIX system , but they wanted access to the source code.

A lot of GNU was replicating work that had been done by other Unixes but the goal was to have it available as GPL.

While obviously colored memory , the standpoint was very pragmatic: http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch01.html

Next to that: I would only call it ideological if it was for some higher, intangible value in a future yet to discover. But I find the purpose of the GPL from inception until now only pragmatic.

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