Making Copyleft Do What We Thought It Did

> It has only been a stereotype, a leaky abstraction, never the truth. By drafting choice and changes in programming reality, activist-drafted copyleft licenses have always implemented something less than the "free for free software" spec. For example, FSF licenses studiously preserve the right of companies to make and hoard "private changes", even within sprawling organizations, even though copyright licenses can require their release.

Because "Free Software" has always been about USER freedom. It's always been about the CONSUMER of software, and those big corps you talk about are CONSUMERS.

As soon as the consumer becomes a provider, Free Software licences bite, and that is the line the Free Software philosophy draws.

(And this is where the FSF has the problem with big corps selling devices, which are software updateable, but the USER is denied the ability/freedom to do the updating ...)

Contrast that with Open Source licences, which are all about DEVELOPER freedom.

In practice, code which satisfies one philosophy will satisfy the other, but the focus is completely different.

Cheers,
Wol