Nej, that analogy breaks down pretty quickly. Laws against murder prevent direct harm to others; the GPL restricts how people can use and distribute their own work. Those aren’t remotely the same category.
With MIT or BSD, “freedom” means I can do whatever I want with the code, no exceptions, no strings attached. The GPL removes that option and then rebrands the restriction as a higher form of freedom. That’s where it starts to sound a bit Orwellian: freedom by prohibition.
You can argue that the total “set of freedoms” is larger, but that only works if you accept the premise that taking choices away somehow increases freedom. Not everyone buys that definition.
Copyleft might have its place and maybe it even helps produce some good things, but the whole surrounding narrative is sus. Claiming that enforcing restrictions is the definition of freedom is a level of mental acrobatics I’m not willing to follow.
GPL specifically tries to protect the intention of the original authors that the software be available without burden to the end users. It doesn’t give a rat’s tail to anything else. The end user must be able to access and build and modify and use the source code.
MIT, BSD, Boost, etc. are concerned with the software being used by middlemen without burden, but you can fuck the end user. You can fuck the original authors, etc.
You are thinking of protecting software as the be-all-end-all goal of any license. It’s not true for GPL and several other licenses. They are trying to protect the end user.
If a product you’re using hits a big/corner case frequently and it uses GPL code, just patch and reap the benefits.
TLDR: GPL is communist and MIT, BSD, etc. are capitalist.
Nej, that analogy breaks down pretty quickly. Laws against murder prevent direct harm to others; the GPL restricts how people can use and distribute their own work. Those aren’t remotely the same category.
With MIT or BSD, “freedom” means I can do whatever I want with the code, no exceptions, no strings attached. The GPL removes that option and then rebrands the restriction as a higher form of freedom. That’s where it starts to sound a bit Orwellian: freedom by prohibition.
You can argue that the total “set of freedoms” is larger, but that only works if you accept the premise that taking choices away somehow increases freedom. Not everyone buys that definition.
Copyleft might have its place and maybe it even helps produce some good things, but the whole surrounding narrative is sus. Claiming that enforcing restrictions is the definition of freedom is a level of mental acrobatics I’m not willing to follow.
GPL specifically tries to protect the intention of the original authors that the software be available without burden to the end users. It doesn’t give a rat’s tail to anything else. The end user must be able to access and build and modify and use the source code.
MIT, BSD, Boost, etc. are concerned with the software being used by middlemen without burden, but you can fuck the end user. You can fuck the original authors, etc.
You are thinking of protecting software as the be-all-end-all goal of any license. It’s not true for GPL and several other licenses. They are trying to protect the end user.
If a product you’re using hits a big/corner case frequently and it uses GPL code, just patch and reap the benefits.
TLDR: GPL is communist and MIT, BSD, etc. are capitalist.