The fear war against Linux (News.com)

The fear war against Linux (News.com)

The pointy bit of the GPL (the part that makes it a tack on Mr. Gates' chair) seems to be RMS' strong advocacy of the view that sharing is normal. The GPL embodies this assumption. If you want to make a piece of software proprietary, and you are in an environment where lots of GPL code is floating around, you have a problem to work out, because you have to essentially make it clean-room style because you as a proprietary developer are intentionally sealing your code off from the rest of the world. The 'normal' thing to do would be to participate in the common good by sharing your unique code and by using others' code to bring your package to light faster by not reinventing the wheel. But (according to the RMS view) since you're being recalcitrant and ornery by refusing to share your code, you should bear the burden of making sure that your code is truly sealed off, not the other way round. The creative commons shouldn't bear the burden of your selfishness. I know that's a radical departure from the reigning zeitgeist, but that is what I have synthesized as the mindset behind the GPL, and I for one agree with it. Whether or not it works to 'keep all the programmers from starving' or whatever the latest FUD is, I don't care. If there is a need for software to be written, it will be written, and someone will figure out a way to eat while it's being written. The development model doesn't matter on that point. The point is, sharing makes us all richer. Not sharing makes us all poorer in the long run.