Picking a license

[Paul Boddie]

On 13 Mai, 22:10, Patrick Maupin <pmau... at gmail.com> wrote:
>

[...]

Just to deal with your Ubuntu "high horse" situation first, you should
take a look at the following for what people regard to be the best
practices around GPL-licensed software distribution:

http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html

If you still think Ubuntu are violating the GPL or encouraging others
to do so, feel free to contact their lawyers who I'm sure will be very
interested to hear from you.

> When the leader of your religion bandies terms like "freedom" and
> "evil" about, what do you expect?  Seriously?

I thought you were "done". I guess you are: again, we have the usual
courting of public outrage by labelling stuff you don't like as
"religion" - presumably not the "right one", either - when it is no
such thing.

[...]

> My primary agenda is to explain that RMS does, in fact, have an
> agenda, and the GPL was designed as a tool in furtherance of that
> agenda, and that while the agenda does have some arguably noble goals,
> before using the GPL people should understand its consequences both
> for good and bad, and make their own determination about whether it's
> the right license for their project.

Reading through your "translations" of what are effectively honest
summaries, one gets the impression that you have quite a chip on your
shoulder about the FSF and RMS. Referring to the GPL as a "commercial"
licence and stating that it (as opposed to any other licence or even
the word "copyright" followed by a name) is a threat to sue people,
presumably appealing to the libertarian crowd with a judicious mention
of "government" just to fan the flames of supposed injustice, really
does triangulate where you are coming from. So, yes, we're now rather
more aware of what your agenda is, I think.

And I don't think it improves any argument you may have by projecting
notions of "morality" or "immorality" onto what I have written,
especially when I have deliberately chosen to use other terms which
avoid involving such notions, or by equating the copyleft licences
with criminal enterprises ("pyramid scheme"), or by suggesting that I
endorse criminal endeavours. But if that's what you have left to say
at this point, then I think you probably are "done".

Paul