wxPython Licence vs GPL

[Ed Jensen]

Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> It's interesting that you bring this tired thought experiment up in the
> context of the original remark: "Its license is far more "free" than
> GPL is." If we were focusing on the "vox pop" interpretation of the
> word "free", that remark wouldn't make any sense at all: after all,
> what's more gratis than gratis (to use a less ambiguous word)?

My only intention was to point out that "Free Software" is a rather
misleading term.

I still think of the term "Free Software" as false advertising.

> Python is moderately successful, yes, but the GPL is a useful tool to
> ensure that certain freedoms are preserved. I've been made aware of a
> certain level of dissatisfaction about whether organisations porting
> Python to other platforms would choose to share their modifications and
> improvements with anyone, or whether binary downloads with restrictive
> usage conditions would be the best even the customers of such
> organisations would be able to enjoy. Ensuring some of those freedoms
> can be an effective way of making open source software projects
> successful.

I'm aware of this concern.  I don't think it's justified.  Unless
you'd like to point out all those closed, proprietary Python
implementations that are destroying civilization as we know it.

> At least when it comes to software licensing, what probably upsets the
> anti-GPL "pragmatic licensing" crowd the most is that Stallman is quite
> often right; the BitKeeper debacle possibly being one of the more
> high-profile cases of some group's "pragmatism" (or more accurately,
> apathy) serving up a big shock long after they'd presumably dismissed
> "the hippie nonsense".

Stallman thinks selling closed, proprietary software is evil.
Stallman thinks buying closed, proprietary software is evil.

I find these opinions and "morals" fundamentally and obviously wrong.

> Well, from what I've seen of open source software usage in business, a
> key motivation is to freeload, clearly driven by people who neither see
> nor understand any other dimension of software freedom than your "vox
> pop" definition. Such users of open source software could make their
> work a lot easier if they contributed back to the projects from which
> they obtained the software, but I've seen little understanding of such
> matters. Of course, businesses prefer to use euphemisms like "cost
> reduction" or "price efficiency" rather than the more accurate
> "freeloading" term, and they fail to see any long-term benefits in
> anything other than zero cost, zero sharing acquisition and
> redistribution of code. But then in some sectors, the game is all about
> selling the same solution over and over again to the same customers, so
> it's almost understandable that old habits remain.

Wah, wah, I gave this software away for free, and people are actually
using it without giving anything back!  Wah, wah!

>> but then that gives me the right to refer to GPL'd software as "free as in pushing my
>> personal social agenda".

> Pushing on whom, though? No-one makes you use GPL'd software by, for
> example, installing it on almost every computer you can buy from major
> vendors. If, on the other hand, you mean that some social agenda is
> being imposed on you because, in choosing to redistribute someone's
> work, you are obliged to pass on those freedoms granted to you by the
> creator (or distributor) of that work, then complaining about it seems
> little more than a foot-stamping exercise than anything else.

Now you're just trying to put words into my mouth.

I never said anything was being "pushed on" me.  I never said anything
was being "imposed on" me.  I said an agenda was being pushed.
Stallman and company have an agenda, and the GPL is their instrument
of choice for pushing that agenda.