[Fsfe-se] GPL-detalj

[Jeremiah Foster]

On Sep 30, 2005, at 4:55 PM, Patrik Lermon wrote:

> Jon Kristensen skrev:
>> Jag har alltid tyckt att den första meningen i GPLs "Preamble" har 
>> varit
>> lite dum, den säger "The licenses for [most software] are designed to
>> take away your freedom to share and change it.". Anledningen till att
>> jag anser att det är lite dumt är att det ju skulle behöva ändras om
>> mängden fria program blev större än mängden proprietära program.
>> Det som fick mig att skriva detta var att jag läste någonstans att
>> Richard Stallman hade sagt att GPL3 skulle vara en "perfekt" licens 
>> som
>> aldrig skulle behöva ändras, varför jag tycker att man borde kunna
>> omformulera denna första rad på något sätt.
>> Vad tycker ni? :-)
>
> Fast å andra sidan betyder väl "The licenses for [most software] are 
> designed to take away your freedom to share and change it." att de 
> flesta _licenser_ faktiskt är designade för att beröva frihet.
>
> Och det kan ju ändå stämma även om GPL-licensierade program skulle bli 
> fler (om man nu inte syftar på licenser som de faktiska kopiorna av 
> licensen  ;-)

I think there may some confusion here. Firstly, the line from the 
Preamble; "The licenses for [most software] are designed to take away 
your freedom to share and change it." refers to licenses, not software. 
So even if there was a preponderance of free software the licenses 
issue would be entirely separate. For example, you could have 100% of 
all free software in the world use one license. Then the majority of 
licenses would be still be non-free since there would be one free 
license and many non-free licenses.

It appears that the Preamble may continue to hold true for many years. 
In fact nearly everything on a Windows computer is licensed with 
something else than the GPL, and that is just one operating system. We 
might extrapolate and say that other operating systems like Apple's OS, 
Symbian, AIX, etc. also succumb to this preponderance of non-free 
licensing.

We can see that there us a multitude of licenses out there and despite 
the success of the GPL this will remain true until it becomes clear to 
the common person, (the oft-sited homo economicus,) that the 
fundamental business model, and therefor the accompanying licenses to 
protect that model, has changed.

In short, changing the Preamble seems premature.

Jeremiah Foster

http://www.devmodul.com
jeremiah.foster at devmodul.com
Tel/Mobil: +46 (0)730 930 506