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0 pointssaulpw11mo ago0 comments

The GPL was "To prevent free code from being proprietarized" by for-profit corporations.

In addition the origin of Stallman's open source philosophy was a printer he couldn't use because of closed-source software. From the start it was about the rights of the users, not corporations.

https://www.free-soft.org/gpl_history/

> In the early years (1984 to 1988), the GNU Project did not have a single license to cover all its software. What led Stallman to the creation of this copyleft license was his experience with James Gosling, creator of NeWs and the Java programming language, and UniPress, over Emacs. While Stallman created the first Emacs in 1975, Gosling wrote the first C-based Emacs (Gosling Emacs) running on Unix in 1982. Gosling initally allowed free distribution of the Gosling Emacs source code, which Stallman used in early 1985 in the first version (15.34) of GNU Emacs. Gosling later sold rights to Gosling Emacs to UniPress, and Gosling Emacs became UniPress Emacs. UniPress threatened Stallman to stop distributing the Gosling source code, and Stallman was forced to comply. He later replace these parts with his own code. (Emacs version 16.56). (See the Emacs Timeline) To prevent free code from being proprietarized in this manner in the future, Stallman invented the GPL.

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sbarre11mo ago

As someone else said GPL !== OSS.

> The GPL was "To prevent free code from being proprietarized" by for-profit corporations.

You are adding the "by for-profit corporations" here. That's not in the link you provided. Let's distinguish between what was actually said or meant, and your own personal interpretation or editorializing here.

In the GPL context "proprietarized" could apply to anyone. I could write and release proprietary code with restrictive usage limits, and I'm not a corporation. And the GPL wants to prevent me from doing that as well.

The right to see and modify the source code to the software you run is not restricted, or aimed at, individuals or corporations. I think the GPL's goals here are universal, meaning any entity should have those rights.

Which I think is a good thing. We agree on the ideals of free software here, I just think you're layering "for-profit corporations" on top of it in a manner that was never actually part of the philosophy, because it doesn't make those distinctions.

It can certainly be part of your philosophy, but be clear about that.

trelane11mo ago

The GPL and Free Software, yes. Open Source not so much. The term "open source" was originally coined to make Free Software more easily understandable to newbies. Pretty much right away, though, it was used to water down Free Software licenses to make them more palatable to businesses by selling the end users' freedom.

https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source... https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

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