GPL isn’t “Free as in freedom”
What are you talking about?
As you know, there are a lot of different open source licenses. Some described as copyleft and some copy middle. GPL is the best example of a copyleft license, and it puts user over everything. For example, I can pull the entirety of GNU core utilities and change it. So far so good and this applies for copy middle licenses as well, but where the difference starts is if I want to redistribute it. GPL only allows the user to redistribute it with GPL compatible licenses. But that’s not where it ends. To prevent a legal loophole, GPL sticks to your new license too. By legal loophole take this example; I copied some GPLed code to my project, I give the project the MIT license which allows the code to be used for proprietary purposes. I released the code and then I re-copied the code again since it’s a MIT license code, this time I made it proprietary. That’s where GPL comes in, even if the new license allows me to close it GPL sticks to the code and makes sure it can’t be closed despite it not having a copyleft license. I find this rather hostile. Software should be open for everyone not just select few and GPL goes against that. If I want to take some code and close it, it should be my freedom to do so. Especially if the code is not published under GPL. Steve Ballmer infamously said, “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.” Which is really uneducated way to say “GPL is a license virus” and I wholeheartedly agree to that. GPL is a license virus. Think of copyright licenses, the basic idea is “I made this, and if you use it in your code I can sue you.” now look at GPL, “I made this, and if you use it in your proprietary code I can sue you.” That’s the gist of it. Copyleft is as intrusive as copyright.
But they are doing this to protect user rights!
I agree, and this is the main point. They shouldn’t advertise themselves as freedom respecting people if that’s the case. Freedom requires equality. If I have the rights to use that code in my open source program, the next guy should have the rights to use it in their proprietary program. This is the twisted understanding of FSFs equality. So my problem is not them limiting proprietary usage of code, but them acting like it’s “Free as in freedom”. It isn’t freedom, it is communism, but I guess “Free as in communism” doesn’t sound as good as free as in freedom.