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It's confusing if you think about it in terms of developer freedom, which the GPL isn't written for. It's about a user's freedom to run, study, modify, and distribute software however they want. It's this seed of freedom that prevents software from controlling the users. That's what the GPL protects.

So your objection to the GPL is essentially that it doesn't grant you the freedom to take away these user rights.

Isn't a user who modifies and distributes software otherwise known as a developer?

Exactly! Especially for programming tools like GCC or Clang, the end user is by definition a developer.

No, because they might be paying someone else to do the development.

So this is about protecting the rights of people rich enough to hire developers to work on bespoke projects that cannot be distributed as proprietary. I.e. Large corporations.

I am currently paying for some bespoke software development (split with two other individuals).

Is it under the GPL?

AGPL, as it happens.

While the above is the case, I'd just like to note that it misses the thrust of the subthread - my point was that it can demonstrably be affordable for other than "large corporations", which is the case regardless of the license under which I am releasing it.

I wasn't speaking in absolutes, so one counter anecdote hardly defeats the point. Bespoke development is clesrly out of reach of most end-users.

"I wasn't speaking in absolutes, so one counter anecdote hardly defeats the point."

You were talking out your ass, is what you were doing. An anecdote about THREE. INDIVIDUALS. doing X pretty solidly "defeats the point" that X is reserved to "large corporations" - we're not even a mid-sized corporation! None of the three of us currently paying for bespoke development is particularly wealthy (one is a part-time music teacher), if we'd gone overseas (or even out of state) we could lower development cost further, and the scope of our project is much larger than the minimum meaningful chunk of work.

"Bespoke development is cle[a]rly out of reach of most end-users."

Bespoke development is not out of reach of most end users, at least in terms of resources required. I would put forward that basically any user desiring a particular feature or small functionality change - outside of extreme examples - could financially manage it if 1) they cared enough and 2) they found sufficient friends interested in the same, and that for most users and simple tasks, "sufficient friends" is not a hugely high number. Organizationally, most users would presently have a hard time picking an appropriate developer and working with them, but that's a separate problem that numerous groups are working on solving.

With proprietary software, on the other hand, bespoke development is far further out of reach, because there is dramatically less competition - only the original authors can bid to modify a piece of proprietary software so no two groups are bidding on the same job.

I'm sorry you've chosen to stop being civil. It doesn't support your argument.

Bespoke development clearly is out of reach of most end users. There are billions of end users of computers now. You may exist in a rarefied stratum of the economy that gives you this freedom, but to claim that this is the case for most users is bizarre.

I am astonished that you think that choosing a good developer is the biggest challenge for end users who want custom software.

Your comment about proprietary software is invalidated by the examples of the web, Google Play, and the iOS app stores, which are brimming with highly specialized solutions which are developed because there is a business model to support the developers.

"I'm sorry you've chosen to stop being civil. It doesn't support your argument."

No, it doesn't support my argument. It also doesn't undermine it, and it served as a certain amount of stress relief in the face of an unconstructive and (in my view) absurd response, but it was nonetheless inappropriate and I apologize.

"Bespoke development clearly is out of reach of most end users. There are billions of end users of computers now. You may exist in a rarefied stratum of the economy that gives you this freedom, but to claim that this is the case for most users is bizarre."

Is your argument "it could not be sustainable, because there are not enough developers compared to users"? I don't see any other argument there, but as that one seems easily (if somewhat verbosely) addressed I want to be sure I'm speaking to your actual argument.

"I am astonished that you think that choosing a good developer is the biggest challenge for end users who want custom software."

Not just choosing a good developer, but collectively choosing a good developer, sufficiently defining the task, and communicating with the developer. I do think that is the biggest challenge for users who wish to customize an existing piece of software under a free license. It is not the biggest challenge for users who want to modify or reimplement a large piece of proprietary (or non-existent) software, but that is comparatively rare and it matters less the licenses of existing code. If you disagree, please be explicit about what challenges you think would dominate.

"Your comment about proprietary software is invalidated by the examples of the web, Google Play, and the iOS app stores, which are brimming with highly specialized solutions which are developed because there is a business model to support the developers."

That certainly invalidates any claim there can be no specialization in proprietary software, but I never made that claim. Freedom 1 is a right to modify the software I am running. That presumes there is an existing solution that's not quite what I want. If the license on that solution preserves my "freedom 1", paying someone to modify it is competitive, and therefore probably cheaper and probably better.

Not an other post about what "freedom" means :(.

Please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights and in particularly about the right to be left alone (negative rights).

Freedom of speech, private property, freedom from violent crime, freedom of worship, habeas corpus, a fair trial, freedom from slavery are just a few freedoms that can only be implemented by restricting others. You can't have freedom from slavery without restricting slave owners their right to enslave. Thus the term negative rights had to be made by philosophers and political scientists.

The proprietary model is to trade software for money, and then threaten your customers with lawsuit if they share or modify the program. GPL provide software under the freedom from those threats, with the use of negative rights (ie, the user of the program has a right to be left alone). If you can not make software without threatening your users, don't try to start by taking GPL software.

A number of companies have been sued for using GPL software in ways incompatible with the GPL, so I don't see how the distinction you're drawing here is meaningful.

I'm blocked from using GPL software the way I want; in that way I'm not free to use GPL software how I want. That is a "freedom," regardless of how you're trying to define the word. FSF is trying to grant one freedom by taking away another, period. Yes, it's my "freedom" to restrict how others copy my resulting software, but it's still a freedom. To claim otherwise is pedantic at best.

>If you can not make software without threatening your users, don't try to start by taking GPL software.

Umm...other than using it as it's designed and permitted (e.g., gcc), I don't. Any code libraries that are GPL (or even LGPL, except under specific circumstances) are dead to me. I'm annoyed when my time is wasted coming across one on a search. I would even bail on GCC for the superior Clang but I have one package (of many) that needs GCC to build in my current project for a client.

Almost all GPL code is likely to lose support compared to any BSD/MIT competition in the long term (except possibly for those packages used in server development, since they can be used commercially without being distributed, circumventing the intent of the GPL). Most non-server developers do their best to avoid linking to GPLed software because they're working on proprietary software.

RMS alludes to this in the article: "The existence of LLVM is a terrible setback for our community..." The superior network effects of BSD/MIT-licensed libraries means that those libraries will get more developers, who will fix more bugs and more features, which will then attract more developers, etc. (Not to mention the fact that LLVM is just more awesome than GCC).

As a developer I hate to have to rewrite code. Yet I'm forced to if the only code available is GPL; I can't change my business goals or those of my clients for the sake of a goal that's never going to be achieved. Asking me to is naive. The financial reality is that (most of the time) to make money writing software, you need to sell it (and therefore restrict the rights of those you sell it to).

The first 80% of a project is the most fun and satisfying; most open source projects rarely make it beyond that first 80% (if they make it that far) [1]. Companies that make money writing software will pay developers to complete the libraries they're using. As those BSD/MIT libraries get better, the GPLed competition will fall behind.

[1] Notable exceptions include the abovementioned server software category, where commercial/proprietary developers can use (and therefore will likely contribute to) GPLed code, and projects that have enough income to support full-time commercial development.

> My job involves creating non-free software.

> But it strikes me as ironic that RMS talks about "freedom" when really he's advocating restricting your freedom to use the software.

1. The GPL isn't restricting your freedom, your employer is. You are working under contract terms and policy selected by your employer. Your preferences aren't relevant.

2. The GPL isn't restricting your employer from using the software, just distributing proprietary add-ons or integrating parts of it in to their commercial products. They can still use it to compile and ship software, for free, giving nothing in return... that's still a pretty sweet deal when you go and look at the competition. Microsoft will charge you for the privilege of using their inferior compiler (full VS suite aside).

What kind of mindset says "Oh boy! B is giving me more stuff for free than A was, I'm going to go shit on A and make demands!"

The GPL is absolutely restricting what people do with software. To say otherwise is a lie.

No. Users of GPL software are under the right to be left alone if they want to modify or share the program. The developer who want to add restrictions on the program is the one who infringe on the users right.

This is true but irrelevant because nobody is talking about adding restrictions to existing GPL software.

There is nothing you can do with non-GPL software that you cannot do with GPL software that does not involve distributing code with more restrictions.

You can't distribute someone else's GPL code in a way that allows other people to redistribure it with more restrictions. That's a big deal if you want to mix GPL code with your BSD-licensed project, even if you don't personally touch any non-free software.

Hm, you can mix GPL code with your previously BSD-licensed project, and release the result under the GPL. However, I'll grant that that's strictly an exception there as I worded things. The only thing that could be done with the hypothetically-still-bsd combined work that couldn't be done with the perfectly allowed GPL combined work is to add more restrictions, though, so I think my general point still stands.

That said, not all restrictions are equally problematic - an obvious brokenness would be wanting to mix original-BSD-license code and GPL code; both licenses purportedly free (says even the FSF), but the 4 clause BSD code adds a restriction regarding advertising materials mentioning UC Berkeley.

>The only thing that could be done with the hypothetically-still-bsd combined work that couldn't be done with the perfectly allowed GPL combined work is to add more restrictions, though, so I think my general point still stands.

That's true, but if I'm a person whose only goal in life is to maximize free software, I may still be rationally motivated to license my project BSD instead of GPL. A BSD-licensed project can sometimes attract more users. Of course, that is because some of them will use it in their own non-free projects; but in many cases, their project would have been non-free anyway, and they would have just used someone else's code instead of mine, or written their own. If they use my project, it makes my project's ecosystem stronger, which is good for free software.

One can certainly make that case, at which point it largely amounts to a factual question and I don't have the data to answer it.

"If they use my project, it makes my project's ecosystem stronger, which is good for free software."

Maybe. If they run with your code and build a proprietary fork with a few features on you, and users migrate over, your project's ecosystem may be weaker despite the code being used by more people, and it would be bad for free software. It's hard to say.

No GPL do not restrict you with anything you do with software. The only thing is if you distribute binary, distribute code too. You may create addons system for paid apps or may be deploy business logic on cloud-saas and distribute thin client. you are not distributing business logic/binary so you can use it however you use.

>The GPL isn't restricting your freedom, your employer is.

I'm freelance. I write games and apps, and I do contract work. I can't use GPL software (except for GCC, which I already noted) in creating any of the products that I create because I need to make money.

Not everyone can make a Free product so popular that they can make money being paid to maintain it. I think there are probably fewer than twenty examples of such products that are actually monetarily successful for their creators, and I've read multiple stories of developers who had crazy-popular free products and who were unable to make ends meet.

Not sure how you expect "my employer" to make money giving products away for free either.

It's not "my employer" but the market realities that restrict my freedom with respect to GPL. I can't even publish an iOS app with GPL code; blame Apple all you want, but iOS and Android are gold mines of contract opportunities. You're telling me I should stand on some feel-good principle and ignore the $125-150/hour contract offers that keep pouring in and instead take a job making free software for 1/3 that amount? If I can even find such a position?

Sorry, I'm taking the money. You can make the sacrifice if you want.

>Microsoft will charge you for the privilege of using their inferior compiler

Express editions have been free for years. And that includes the entire VS suite as well as command line compilers.

>"Oh boy! B is giving me more stuff for free than A was, I'm going to go shit on A and make demands!"

Umm...hello? That's entirely unlike what I said.

What I said was: Lots of Free stuff sucks enough I'm willing to pay for closed alternatives. That's two kinds of payment: Paying with dollars, and paying with the restrictions in my freedom. And I'm saying the transaction is worth it. I'm not making any demands. I am saying that a lot of free software sucks compared to the alternatives, but that's just the truth.

In the case of Clang, it's awesome to me that it's BSD-free. If I need it in a piece of software, I can use it without question. Might it end up in a proprietary package? Yes. But if that user makes changes they'll likely send them back upstream so that other users of Clang will benefit.

> But it strikes me as ironic that RMS talks about "freedom" when really he's advocating restricting your freedom to use the software.

It is ironic in a way, but it is only a valid criticism if you consider that you should have the freedom to restrict other peoples freedoms. This is generally considered to be immoral in modern society.

"I can't use just about anything GPL in my job."

"I make builds using gcc daily and gnu make"

Yes. So? Your point is?

I called it out as the only thing I do use.

And I may transition to Clang from gcc if a build problem I encountered with an older Clang version is fixed. That leaves gnu make.

And make sucks for many, many reasons, but that's not Gnu's fault. It's just that all the other building solutions suck more.

My point is that you do use a relatively large amount of GPL code (the gcc codebase is huge) and there are doubtless more GPL programs you can perfectly well use during development and simply choose not to. "I can't use just about anything GPL in my job" is a mischaracterization. What you can't do is incorporate GPL code in non-GPL code you are distributing (which quite probably does include most of the work you do for your job, although not necessarily testing frameworks, &c).