Re: Questions

[Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas urgent rug ac be>]

Hi,

> I believe you got my point. GPL restricts me from using other free 
> software.

That's not what the license says at all.  I'm free to use adobe acrobat or 
flash or realplayer on my gnome desktop.

> Is this a real freedom? I don't think so. And as I said it makes GNOME less
> attractive as a development platform.
> Personally, I would prefer to see GNOME moving towards non-restrictive
> MIT type licenses. This will not make GNOME less "free software" and this
> will allow to use GNOME in non-free world as well.

You can use GNOME in a non-free world as well.

> I understand the logic behind GPL that forces everyone who use GPLed code
> to use GPL.

And that too is not what the license says at all.

I'm totally not an expert on the GPL at all, but it certainly doesn't say 
that you cannot use GPL software with proprietary software.  It says stuff 
about what you can link to what, and for what purposes you can reuse other 
people's code in your projects, and under what terms.  But it does not 
claim anything about *using* pieces of software on the same machine or 
anything.

The end goal of the GPL might very well be to never ever use non-free 
software or even non-GPL software, but that's not what the license says.

 > But I don't think that this helps free software. Again, I 
> don't think
> that force is the right way to the freedom. IMHO, the only thing you can 
> do is to
> help people make a choice (provide a choices, educate about choices, 
> give more
> information). But the choice have to be made by each and everyone 
> personally.
> I don't think that forcing someone to be free is a real freedom.

You're not forced to be free at all.  You have the choice to run any 
desktop you want.  First of all, even on your GPL'd Gnome desktop you can 
run whatever you want.  Second, even if what you said were true (ie, the 
bit about not being allowed to use non-free software with GPL software), 
then even then you weren't forced to be free.  In that case, nobody would 
be forcing you to use Gnome, you would be making the choice voluntarily.  
But as I said, the premise was false to begin with.

But even if it were true, you'd *still* have more freedom than on 
proprietary desktops.

Thomas

 -- 

The Dave/Dina Project : future TV today ! - http://davedina.apestaart.org/
<-*- thomas (dot) apestaart (dot) org -*->
"You don't need a girlfriend, you need a maid !"
"Isn't that the same thing ?"
"Uh uh, baby, you're in the wrong century."
<-*- thomas  (at) apestaart (dot) org -*->
URGent, the best radio on the Internet - 24/7 ! - http://urgent.rug.ac.be/