Freedom is legislated: GPL

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