Two GPL Questions

[David Johnson]

On Monday 10 December 2001 05:06 pm, Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 09, 2001 at 03:33:36PM -0800, David Johnson wrote:
> > Perhaps you might want to look at another license altogether.  There are
> > several weak to moderate copyleft licenses (MPL, QPL, etc) that may fit
> > your needs without making you feel cheap-and-easy for using them. Or
> > maybe copyleft just isn't for you. Copyleft is all about being in control
> > of the software, despite the FSF's protestations to the contrary. Maybe
> > the BSD or MIT licenses would be more to your liking.
>
> I disagree.
>
> Copyleft is all about the freedom of code.
> No one can control the code, because anyone can exercise their freedoms
> with the code. _ANYONE_

By "control", I mean that you as the author use the GPL because you wish to 
enforce a particular behavior upon the user. You don't want them to 
redistribute the code in any manner but the terms that you specify. You don't 
want them dynamically linking to your code with any non-GPL applications. You 
do want control over your software. Every term in the license is a point of 
control, sa way of you saying "this is how you will do things".

> BSD allows other to fork your code, extend and embrace it and never ever
> compensate you for anything (see the case of microsoft's ftp client, for
> instance) if they so wish.

Why do I want compensation for my hobbyist work? Isn't demanding compensation 
of code or money a form of control? If I were writing commercial open source 
software, then some form of copyleft would make sense, since as a commercial 
distributor desiring to get paid control of the software is in my best 
interest. But I don't write commercial open source so I don't need the 
control.

-- 
David Johnson
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