[kwlug-disc] Permissive vs copyleft licenses

[Doug Moen]

> The GPL focuses on freedom first

This is a controversial statement within the FOSS community, and it only makes sense in the context of FSF theology.

In the BSD world, a "permissive licence"  is called a "copyfree licence", because that is the type of licence that maximizes freedom (in contrast to "copyleft"). According to BSD theology, the more things that the licence allows you to do with the source code or the program, the freer it is. So, BSD/MIT licence is freer than GPL 2, which is freer than GPL 3, which is freer than AGPL 3, which is freer than non-FOSS licences. This makes intuitive sense, and for me is easier to understand than the FSF theory that taking away some of your freedom makes you more free.

One dictionary definition of "freedom" is "The condition of being free of restraints". The restraints are imposed by clauses in the licence, and the fewer clauses that restrict what you are allowed to do with the software, the freer you are.

Homepage for the Copyfree Initiative: http://www.copyfree.org/

The BSD communities take freedom very seriously. The FreeBSD base has very little remaining GPL software: a large fraction of that was eliminated when the GCC tools were removed and replaced by Clang. But they do at least tolerate non-copyfree software in the base if no good alternatives exist. OpenBSD is more fundamentalist about this, and they won't even tolerate Apache 2 licensed software in the base, because that licence is less free than the BSD licence. And OpenBSD suffers for this, because they can't upgrade to the latest version of the Apache web server, or the latest version of Clang--both use Apache 2 licence. You can't plausibly claim that OpenBSD's uncompromising stance on software freedom has anything to with "doing unpaid work for corporations", as RMS might say, because the Apache 2 licence is corporation friendly. The BSD people are pursuing software freedom as a moral principle.

The lack of freedom in the GPL licences does impact me personally, even within the context of a pure FOSS software project, due to the concept of "licence incompatibility", a concept seemingly invented by RMS and promoted by him and his acolytes as a device to prevent people from using FOSS software in ways he disapproves of (or, "increasing people's freedom", as he would put it). For example, there are two libraries I've considered using in my project. One, Carve, has a GPL 2 licence (not GPL 2 or later). The other, CGAL, has a GPL 3 licence. According to RMS, I am not  permitted to link to both of these libraries: I must choose one or the other, because the GPL 2 is incompatible with the GPL 3. Hurray! I feel so "free"! This bullshit does not occur in the world of copyfree licensing.

Note that I don't subscribe to any of these theologies. I use the Apache 2 licence, which according to the FSF is a "weak, lax, pushover" licence, and according to copyfree.org, is a non-free licence.

> It is much more a mindset of "I'll make my own free system, on my own time,
> even if it has only a fraction of the features of non-free software.
> Come join me."

I think this mindset is non-denominational, and is shared by the BSD people as well.