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ESR: 'We Don't Need the GPL Anymore' (O'ReillyNet)ESR: 'We Don't Need the GPL Anymore' (O'ReillyNet)Posted Jul 2, 2005 17:10 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767)Parent article: ESR: 'We Don't Need the GPL Anymore' (O'ReillyNet)
My main question is this. Why did Eric just slit his own throat? There have been a couple of suicides by throat slitting lately. Maureen O'Gara did it. OK, that was, perhaps, not terribly surprising. But I do find Eric's sudden "suicide" to be surprising. I'm an OSS guy more than a "Free Software" guy. But this, more than anything else that I have ever seen, validates RMS's concerns about OSS. Without the GPL, exactly what would encourage corporations, for whom self-interest is not just the primary, but the *only* concern, to cooperate with each other, and with the rest of the community, out of pure self-interest?
OK. The GPL is a bit of an obnoxious license to those who want to exploit others. It's even a bit obnoxious to those who don't. But it is the glue that binds us all into a real community. Corporations, individuals, nonprofits. It is in all of our best interests to cooperate because we know we are not going to give, give, give, and then get shafted.
When human beings are involved, the optimal social mechanisms tend to be rather less efficient than the theoretical maximum.
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