Picking a license

[Patrick Maupin]

On May 7, 6:44 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt... at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> Patrick Maupin <pmau... at gmail.com> writes:
> > On May 7, 5:33 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt... at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> > > Since no-one is forcing anyone to take any of the actions permitted
> > > in the license, and since those actions would not otherwise be
> > > permitted under copyright law, it's both false and misleading to
> > > refer to them as “forced”.
>
> > Again, the force is applied once you choose to do a particular thing
> > with the software
>
> And again, that would be the case with or without the specific free
> software license

But the OP wasn't asking whether he should supply a license or not
(the absence of a license would presumably force everybody who wanted
to use the software to download a copy from an authorized site, and
not allow them to make copies for friends); he was asking *which*
license he should use, and he explicitly mentioned MIT and LGPL. In
the post you directly responded to, Aahz had responded to the OP with
a suggested license of "MIT".  So, in the context of the original
question and original answer, the comparison is permissive vs. (L)GPL,
*not* (L)GPL vs. no license at all.

> so it's false and misleading to say the license forces
> anything.

I have already adequately covered what I believe Aahz meant by
"forced" and I think it's a reasonable term for the discussed
situation.

Personally, I believe that if anything is false and misleading, it is
the attempt to try to completely change the discussion from MIT vs.
GPL to GPL vs. no license (and thus very few rights for the software
users), after first trying to imply that people who distribute
software under permissive licenses (that give the user *more* rights
than the GPL) are somehow creating a some sort of moral hazard that
might adversely affect their users, and then refusing to have any
further discussion on that particular issue.

So which is it?  GPL good because a user can do more with the software
than if he had no license, or MIT bad because a user can do more with
the software than if it were licensed under GPL?

> The actions that are prohibited are prohibited by copyright
> law, not by the license.

Yes, just like the taking of food from the restaurant is prohibited by
laws against theft, and in both cases, these prohibitions may be
backed up by the force of the government.  But as discussed, this does
not mean that the restaurant or software author cannot give you
something for free if they desire to.

> I think we're done here.

Certainly appears that neither of us is going to convince the other of
anything.

Regards,
Pat