GPL vs The World

With the recent debacle over whether or not the ASF license is compatible with the GPL license, Leo Simmons discusses the arrogance of the FSF and concludes with: So I might as well stick to the MIT license. But the arrogance of the FSF makes me feel very much like giving them the finger and just going with the ASL. Personally I agree. I’ve never liked the GPL as a license, it’s just way too restrictive to be considered “free software”. It’s open software, but not truly free. The Free Software Foundation has redefined the term “free” to suit their purposes, but it’s hard to argue that truly free software is in the public domain. You can literally do anything you want with it without every having to worry about copyright law. The GPL however, uses copyright law specifically to restrict what you can do with the software. Yes, it’s less restrictive the what copyright law allows by default, but that doesn’t mean it’s not restrictive. It particularly annoys me that the FSF feel the need to try and force everyone to use the GPL instead of picking the license that provides the terms they provide. Many people may want to see commercial software using their code – it helps to spread good ideas and opens up job opportunities for them. Personally I think it’s great when companies use code I’ve released, it’s not like I had plans to use the code to make a profit or I wouldn’t have open sourced it in the first place. The other thing that gets me (as Leo pointed out) is that the GPL isn’t compatible with anything yet the FSF expects every other license to be compatible with it. The day I can use GPL code in my ASL licensed projects is the day I give a damn whether or not people can use my ASL code in GPL projects. In the mean time, everyone except those silly enough to use the GPL can quite happily use my code – in open source or commercial work.