There are people who complain, "the GPL is against freedom and totalitarian, because the GPL doesn't allow people to do whatever with the code! That's not real freedom!"
There are also people who argue, that "the laws that forbid slavery are against freedom and totalitarian, because these laws don't allow people to do whatever they want to other people! That's not real freedom!"
Both are equally right. Yes, sometimes we need laws that proximately limit someone's freedom to do some thing, in order to ultimately guarantee more freedom for more people. For example: In order to give people the freedom to not be exploited, we have laws that limit the freedom to enslave others. In order to give people the freedom to walk on the streets without getting assaulted, we have laws that limit the freedom to assault others. And the GPL works the same way. In order to grant the user of the software the four freedoms, it limits the freedoms of whoever wants to fork the software or contribute to it's development.
The BSD license on the other hand says "we don't want to limit anyone's freedom", so they ultimately end up ignoring everyone's freedom. What would happen if laws worked the same way as the BSD license? There would be no laws against slavery, because that would be limiting the freedom of the slaveowners. There would be no laws against assault, because that would be limiting the freedom to assault whoever you want. Thus, you would not have the freedom to not be exploited, nor would you have the freedom to walk on the streets unharmed.
There are also people who argue, that "the laws that forbid slavery are against freedom and totalitarian, because these laws don't allow people to do whatever they want to other people! That's not real freedom!"
Both are equally right. Yes, sometimes we need laws that proximately limit someone's freedom to do some thing, in order to ultimately guarantee more freedom for more people. For example: In order to give people the freedom to not be exploited, we have laws that limit the freedom to enslave others. In order to give people the freedom to walk on the streets without getting assaulted, we have laws that limit the freedom to assault others. And the GPL works the same way. In order to grant the user of the software the four freedoms, it limits the freedoms of whoever wants to fork the software or contribute to it's development.
The BSD license on the other hand says "we don't want to limit anyone's freedom", so they ultimately end up ignoring everyone's freedom. What would happen if laws worked the same way as the BSD license? There would be no laws against slavery, because that would be limiting the freedom of the slaveowners. There would be no laws against assault, because that would be limiting the freedom to assault whoever you want. Thus, you would not have the freedom to not be exploited, nor would you have the freedom to walk on the streets unharmed.
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