Re: [dwm] Freedom (was: Re: sic ipv6 patch)

On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 12:44 PM, Sylvain Bertrand
<sylvain.bertrand_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 12:31 PM, Sander van Dijk <a.h.vandijk_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>> The discussion wasn't about whether or not GPL provides freedom, the
>> discussion was about the amount of freedom. If most likely everyone
>> would agree that public domain provides more freedom than GPL, then
>> I'd think that the same people would also agree that MIT/BSD fit
>> between PD and GPL in the amount of freedom they provide. Any other
>> conclusion would seem odd to me.
>
> What do you think about the freedom to remove the freedom from the code?

That's not possible. When someone uses (parts of) dwm in a closed
source product, dwm itself remains as free as ever. Nothing, not even
its authors, can change that (well, the authors can change it for
future releases, but not for past releases anyway).

Besides, what I was saying is that when "most likely everyone would
agree that public domain provides more freedom than GPL", these same
people should also agree that MIT/BSD provides more freedom than GPL,
simply because MIT/BSD is PD with some extra restrictions, and GPL is
MIT/BSD with some extra restrictions. In other words, looking at the
amount of restrictions, the relation is like this:
PD < MIT/BSD < GPL.

There's no arguing about that, it's just a fact. Given that relation,
when someone considers PD more free than GPL, he/she can't sensibly
consider MIT/BSD to be less free than GPL (if you think otherwise, I'd
really like to hear your reasoning).

Greetings, Sander.
Received on Tue May 20 2008 - 14:20:45 UTC