Tuesday 26 June 2007

It makes me mad!

If there's one thing in this world that makes me mad (and there isn't, there's loads of things) it's the portions of the Free/Libre/Open Source Software community who assume that anything to do with the law is inherently evil.

Every time I see this is riles me - from the anti-GFDL people in the Debian community, through the "me too" boys who decry the GPL (and especially the GPL3) as being "less free" than BSD licenses without understanding the effect of either, right down to those whom, even with the best of intentions, make statements like this. So often people make ludicrous assertions in areas where there is either no choice, or a serious ill effect to be incurred by slavishly sticking to a misinterpreted principle.

I'm a serious supporter of free software, a member of the FSF, I care deeply about this and I'll say it clearly - simply choosing to ignore the practical application of the law, or choosing not to protect Free Software Developers from events over which they have no control to satisfy some ill-defined idea of "purity" in freedom is not the way to promote free software or freedom in general.

If Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, Larry Lessig and Theo de Raadt, all of whom are smarter and more passionate about free software than you are (I guarantee it), can see this and accept it why can't you?

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......

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