Re: FLTK? (OT: licenses)

[Rob Kendrick <lua-l@...>]

On Sun, 2005-07-03 at 12:13 +0200, Enrico Tassi wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 03, 2005 at 01:27:55AM -0700, Vijay Aswadhati wrote:
> > software is not really 'free' as in 'freedom'.
> 
> Brr...
> If you speak of freedom, in the sense of Free Software, and you think
> GPL software is not Free.. may be you missed something.

I don't think so.  I don't class the GPL as free because it's not free
of restrictions.  It has several, and for some show stopping,
restrictions.

> I think the MIT license is good for LUA, but is free as free beer.
> Everybody can drink it for free, giving nothing back to the LUA
> community.

Everybody can just take and not give, but that's rarely the case.  Just
look at all the available patches and add-ons for Lua (it's not an
acronym, damnit ;-) on the lua-users wiki that are licenced as Lua is.
Or all the patches that Rici Lake and Mike Pall chuck out.

Also consider the development of the freely available BSDs too.

> The big point behind 'free' as in 'freedom' is *ethical*, not technical.
> A MIT software can be taken, made better, an never be back to community
> that created it. This is good for making $$ but not for the community
> who developed the software at the begin. 
> 
> GPL was invented as a trick to make communities grow. And the growth of
> these communities was the target of RMS when he wrote that license.
> 
> GPL software may seem more restrictive as MIT, and in fact it is, 
> but a GPL software will never steel you the kind of freedom you are
> talking about saying 'free' as in 'freedom' (nor the MIT software).
> I think the GPL doesn't give the freedom as in 'free beer', while MIT
> does.

The GPL, however, removes your freedom of choice.  You can't choose.
With MIT or BSD you can.  Many more companies use BSD/MIT licenced stuff
instead of GPL licenced stuff for the obvious reason - it's much easier.
But this also means that there are a lot more companies developing it so
there are more companies who will make the sociable choice and feed
back.  The free BSDs seem to get a hell of a lot of help from commercial
entities.  Also, from a business point of view, almost everything
Lua-orientated (and non-Lua, most of the time) that Pepperfish Ltd. does
is licenced under MIT.

In all, don't say that BSD/MIT stifles sharing.  It doesn't.  It just
gives you the choice not to share, and lots of people don't take that
choice. 

Just my 0.02 pounds sterling, of course.
-- 
Rob Kendrick, Pepperfish Ltd.         +44 (0)845 226 4146  www.pepperfish.net
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