NewsForge: Toward True Open Source

“In the GNU General Public License (GPL), Richard Stallman was
working toward a noble purpose. Software should be
free-as-in-freedom, and every user should be able to obtain the
source code for the software they use. Unfortunately, that isn’t
the way things have turned out. The GPL has come to resemble
digital rights management (DRM) more than it resembles freedom.
Does that sound a little extreme? I’ll explain.

“When I buy music protected by DRM, the seller intends is to
stop me from making copies of songs. When I use software that is
licensed under the GPL, the developer intends to stop me from
making the software ‘closed,’ or non-free…”

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