| |||||||||||||
Freedom is legislated: GPLFreedom is legislated: GPLPosted Oct 13, 2008 17:42 UTC (Mon) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)Parent article: LK2008: The values of the Linux community
"Freedom is not legislated; it arises as an emergent value inherent in the Linux way of doing things." Hmm, me thinks the GPL does exactly that, it legislates. There is no need to debate what freedom means in the community (even though it still is debated.) When it comes down to it, the GPL legislates exactly what it means as far as the linux kernel is concerned. You don't have to agree with what freedom means, you just have to abide by what the GPL says it means if you want to participate (distribute code). It certainly seems legislated to me.
(Log in to post comments)
Freedom is legislated: GPL Posted Oct 23, 2008 17:50 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]
That sentence brought me up short as I read it as well. And after a
minute's contemplation, I came to the same conclusions you did, that the GPL itself is the legislation. It's only within the context of the GPL that the whole Linux (kernel) community exists, and it is precisely because it is preconditionally agreed to for the purposes of Linux development, that the whole situation as described, people who emphasize freedom /as/ freedom, people who couldn't care less about that but are just interested in Linux for the practical reasons, and the majority somewhere in between, exists. As you said, people don't have to agree with it, only to abide by it, if they want to participate in the community.
Duncan
|
|||||||||||||