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

"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/