GPL Version 3: Background to Adoption [LWN.net]

GPL Version 3: Background to Adoption

Posted Jun 11, 2005 11:26 UTC (Sat) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989)
In reply to: GPL Version 3: Background to Adoption by MathFox
Parent article: GPL Version 3: Background to Adoption

The Foundation believes that free software---that is, software that can be freely studied, copied, modified, reused, redistributed and shared by its users---is the only ethically satisfactory form of software development, as free and open scientific research is the only ethically satisfactory context for the conduct of mathematics, physics, or biology.

I think that the various licensing schemes address the human motives for commiting software; ideological, intellectual, economic. The GPL is great, but I get un-excited when one motive declares itself unambiguously superior to the rest. Matter of taste, I suppose. As far as the latter half of the the sentence goes, there was just a Washington Post article about scientists admitting misconduct, which is the top result for this search, but registration is required. Not to be too cynical about it, but the economic forces are simply not isolated from the system.

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GPL Version 3: Background to Adoption

Posted Jun 13, 2005 15:40 UTC (Mon) by jstAusr (guest, #27224) [Link]

Your comments seem to be based on common misconceptions. Did you know that you can sell GPL'd software? You can even charge as much or more than some proprietary companies do. Of course, your customers might expect customer service that is at least as good as that of a popular OS, but that shouldn't be a problem. Just say/write a bunch of sfuff and add reboot and/or re-install the system at the end.

The paragraph that you quoted doesn't state that all research is done ethically, it states "... as free and open scientific research is the only ethically satisfactory...". Please note the work "only".

In the closed source and non-free world, greed tends to overshadow any other motive. That does not mean that all humans are greedy, just that in a closed and unethical world such as business, politics, and to some extent religion. The greedy ones dominate those that are not greedy.

Contrary to popular opinion, I don't think the FSF is about religion at all, it seems to be mostly about equal opportinity and respect.