Believing in free software
Believing in free software
Posted Sep 27, 2006 6:47 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091)In reply to: Why Torvalds is sitting out the GPLv3 process (Linux.com) by mingo
Parent article: Why Torvalds is sitting out the GPLv3 process (Linux.com)
What RMS decides goes into the GPLv3.Correct, and what Linus decides goes into Linus' tree. Nobody forces you to use the GPL; if you want to write your own license, feel free to do it. It is true that you cannot fork the GPLv2; but it is not like you have to use the exact words there, you can write a license with less text than what you have contributed on this page, or use one of the thousands in existence.
Look at the RMS quotes i linked to: "Most of our community does not believe in free software".That quote is not exact; you had it right before: "Most of our community does not appreciate freedom". But even the second version is not so offensive; it is just a terminological issue.
From Stallman's point of view, using sometimes non-free software for convenience, preferring a more practical approach or even using the term "open source" are all signs of not appreciating freedom. The guy has been saying that for ages; it is written all over the FSF's web site, e.g. here or here.
Well, if anyone can say that, it is Stallman. He has been fighting the good fight for longer than many of us have been alive. You can choose to believe that he does not trust the community, or you can view him as a grandpa saying from his armchair: "you youngsters do not value the freedoms we earned at WWII".
Torvalds himself has repeatedly said that he values practical concerns above freedom; often he has only gone the freedom route when forced to. So have many kernel devs; so have you in these pages (when you said that breaking DRM could be seen in a bad light and it was not worth it). If you want to see that as mistrust, and burn the bridges, please do not do it; we all lose.