[LAU] Look ma, I'm in the paper :)

[Louigi Verona]

"I'm pretty sure that today we have so many amazing free software thanks
to this restriction of the GPL license that is there in the license
since 1989."

Of course, because GPL forces hobbyists to also release their programs under
GPL, a lot of hobbyist software is now GPL.

However, you smuggled the word "amazing" in there. I see no link between
GPL and software being "amazing", unless by amazing you mean that it is
"free".

In a way this is a tautology. Because software is released under GPL and
forces all other projects that use it to also be GPL, we have a lot GPL
software.

Of course. But I would need some evidence that this is somehow important.


Keep in mind that there are hundreds of thousands of hobbyist developers who
are writing great software and not making it "free" or even open-source.
And the
world doesn't end.

Take for example one of the greatest Doom II level editors, Doom Builder
<http://www.doombuilder.com/>. This
is a hobbyist piece of software. It is free as in free beer. It is of
extremely high
quality. Yet it is closed source and proprietary.

And notice, in regards to its sustainability, Microsoft itself makes sure
programs
are backwards and forwards compatible for as long as possible. Doom Builder
has been available for years and the fact that it is proprietary did not
keep it
from being available.

In a way, the Linux ecosystem, by being so unstable and prone to constant
changes
that are compatibility-careless has created the problem it is not claiming
to be
in such a good position to solve. Proprietary operating systems don't need
a crowd
of hobbyist developers looking through code to make sure things are still
working
under new Windows, because most of the time it is working.



So, again, the fact that software is "free" is irrelevant until you prove
that it is
somehow good. Not that this argument cannot be made, but the truth of the
matter
is that the utility of "free" software is of limited relevance. It is very
helpful to
one group of people, but utterly unimportant to the other. It is useful in
one
situation, but completely useless in another.

Stallman's argument is ethical. He tries to prove that proprietary software
is evil,
therefore, "free" software is good, regardless of any of the practical
nuances. I
don't buy his arguments.

One thing he says is that "free" software allows people to learn and to
share.
Perhaps. But proprietary software allows to do that as well. There are
other ways
to learn, but taking someone else's program and studying the code.

In fact, I would argue it is better to go through a tutorial or read a book
then try
to study someone else's code. Looking through code not written by yourself
is
very ineffective.





-- 
Louigi Verona
http://www.louigiverona.com/
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