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Comment by NegativeK | Hacker News Reader

As ridiculous as it sounds, that depends on your definition of freedom.

BSD and such allow people the freedom to do almost anything with the code. Close it, leave it open, whatever. BSD grants you the freedom to deny a freedom.

The GPL attempts to preserve that freedom for people other than the current recipient. GPL denies you the freedom to deny a freedom.

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Yep, GPL preserves freedom in exactly the same way modern societies preserve freedom for their citizens. You are free, everyone who lives in the country is also free and you're not allowed to enslave other people. Of course, someone could make the argument that preventing you from owning slaves denies you some freedom. And from a narrow and purely technical side he would be right. However, which society would you say has more freedom, the one in which slavery is forbidden, or the other? I think the same argument applies to FOSS.

I just want to be absolutely clear...did you compare non-GPL licenses to slavery?

No he didn't. he compared the historical objections that was made by slavers when their ability to own slaves became illegal.

The south has even songs about the "good ol' days" where slaves was working in the field. Plantation owners clearly saw the change as oppression, and a limitation on their freedom to operate ones house and businesses as one pleases.

It's called analogy. I think the same reasoning and conclusions apply in both situations, which doesn't mean they are equivalent. It's a useful example when all this "which kind of license offers more freedom" arises.

The societies we live in have answered that denying a little personal freedom in order to protect the collective offers more freedom than the one in which that doesn't happen. There's no debate about that. Then, why are we still debating this?

"the freedom to deny a freedom" is not freedom, it's power.

Yes, and the GPL is only as powerful as the copyright system that supports it. Some people publish under public domain in the US and something like the MIT license for other countries where that license is less restrictive than their particular public domain.

The freedom to have a power is also a freedom. We as a society often want to restrict such powers though.

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