Linguistic Problems of GPL Advocacy

Jul 09, 2008, 17:15 (1 Talkback[s])

"The first disagreement I wish to address concerns the statement 'BSD projects are free, but GPL projects stay free.' GPL advocates cannot understand why the BSD advocates are not getting this point, and BSD advocates make accusations of Communism, which are then argued to death by both parties. The problem with the statement above is the different interpretation of the word 'project.' I, and I suspect many other BSD advocates, generally separate the concept of 'project' from 'code.' While code is what projects are made of, I do not see it as valuable as the useful product a project provides. When I write a program, be it a site scraper, or a todo program, or a UI framework, I think of my project as the entity that matters. The fact that I may have copied some code from one to another is of no concern to me.

"A GPL advocate sees an entirely different situation. To him, it is the code that comes first, and the applications built from that code are a secondary consideration..."

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