I think there are many ways to meet various design requirements of consumer electronics devices while still respecting the rights that I think the other of the device should be given.
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Daniel hits on a key aspect that always bothered me: who the real "users" are. The GPL doesn't affect me as an end user, but it does affect me significantly as a developer, especially if my intent is to potentially create proprietary software products.
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How does the GPL stop you from creating proprietary software products? You can license proprietary equivalents of GPL software for any components you need. If you can't afford to do that then you have a business problem not a license problem.
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You misunderstood me - while technically possible, the ability to incorporate GPL software into proprietary software products is severely restricted. And yes, having to use out-of-process extensions to avoid the GPL propagation to proprietary code is limiting.
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Maybe you misunderstand me. You have choices. You can choose to build products out of GPL software and comply with it's licenses or choose to build products out of proprietary software and comply with it's licenses.
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GPL restricts usage and is a close cousin of those non-commercial licenses. Permissive licenses do exist.
Complying with licenses is itself a choice. GPL violation is the software equivalent of pirating a movie. Many people choose not to respect software licenses anyway.
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Part of what you have to take into account when choosing licensing is that the rules you set are easily violated. You depend on the state enforcing your copyright monopoly by going after people through the legal system. I've had enough of the legal system and copyright already.
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I'm not going to take an approach or choose a license based on that model. I don't think copyright should exist at all and think the negatives far outweigh the positives especially after seeing first hand how it hinders my work but yet many bad actors just entirely ignore it.
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GPL advocates are inherently copyright advocates. The premise that copyleft undermines or subverts copyright is a joke. It's just copyright in the usual form, restricting what people can do and needing to be enforced through the legal system. Only helps people with money/power.
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It's about trying to harness the power structures to empower the powerless. If you're young you won't remember a world dominated by proprietary software.
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Copyright monopoly enforced by the state will always empower the rich and powerful. GPL is part of that system. Copyleft doesn't subvert copyright but rather supports it and depends on it. GPL supports and reinforces existing power structures. It didn't tear them down.
Without laws the strong dominate the weak. Having fair and just laws and enforcement is an endless struggle (that Copyleft is part of) but I'll chose that over anarchy. I don't want a lord of the flies life.
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I don't see anything just about a government enforced monopoly on certain ideas and speech. The legal system used to enforce these things is heavily slanted against anyone without money and power. There's hardly anything fair, just or reasonable about it.
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I am a copyleft advocate, but I am *not* a copyright maximalist.
I believe that the bargain of copyright should be limited, only what seems to be required in the balance of public policy.
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"Upon these incorporeal productions the attribute of property is continued after such communication only in certain classes of cases where public policy has seemed to demand it."
—US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, dissenting in International News Service v. Associated Press
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There are other provocateurs that push copyright into the realms of the absurd, and I think that does public harm. See this from .
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