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No, it's an exception that lets you decide whether to grant freedoms to *direct* users or to *all* users. This is a point where the renaming of free software to open source software dalla short. Free software is about users not about recipients of code.

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Ensuring that everybody gets to have exactly the same freedoms is the opposite of preventing X from doing Y. Sure it's possible to use it as a *means* of preventing X from doing Y, but it is a constructive way to introduce such limitations because it builds a level playing field.

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No, because *everybody* benefits from them. But FWIW I've been writing GPL software for over 20 years and I don't even work for Amazon or any other CSP so perhaps you're thinking of someone else.

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GPL has license incompatibilities even with popular licenses also considered Free Software licenses. It isn't a theoretical issue. As one example, you can't use Linux kernel code in glibc or vice versa. It definitely restricts more than just distributing proprietary code with it.

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Yes, on a licence-by-license basis the obligations that the community has generally accepted are sometimes incompatible with the goals for a particular package (like glibc), or impossible to satisfy when combined together (like GPLv2-only + Apache 2.0) apache.org/licenses/GPL-c

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These incompatibilities wouldn't exist if GPL didn't have non-free usage restrictions. By simply forbidding restrictions it doesn't enforce, it's a non-free license itself even if you make an exception for enforcing that the software remains under your definition of freedom.

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For me, it has been (for decades) a matter of semantics. Often copyleft licenses are called "restrictive". Yes, the obligations of copyleft licenses /could/ be viewed as restrictive on the recipient's "free usage" of the software.

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Another way of saying restrictive is non-free. I don't think copyright is legitimate in the first place. I see no problem with someone not releasing their source code. The problem is a law disallowing you from reverse engineering and copying it. That's what restricts freedom.

7:30 PM · Apr 21, 2021Twitter Web App

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GPL may have been intended to subvert copyright law. In practice, look at how often GPL is used with copyright assignment, dual licensing, etc. as part of upholding a business model through copyright law. Often used because it's the most restrictive thing that FSF says is free.

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I'll reluctantly contribute to a GPLv2 project, but not so much GPLv3, and it's out of the question if they use copyright assignment. There's no way that I'll contribute to any project where I don't get their code under comparable terms to what they offer to me.