What I Learned from the Libertarians

“I myself became a convert to this libertarian perspective when
the fruits of my labor, which I sold for a wage, were placed beyond
my reach and beyond the reach of anybody else by a company whose
shareholders lacked the ability and/or interest in exploiting that
work themselves. It’s true that when I was 22 years old, I agreed
to a bargain that allowed others to exclude me from what I had
created. But when I was 23, I began to understand how the GPL could
protect my rights from neglect (by guaranteeing my continuing
rights to read, modify, and share software independently of the
owner’s desire to do likewise). And by the time I was 25, I
understood how the GPL could also protect my rights from domination
as well (by denying others the right to deny me of my rights). With
that understanding, I found some like-minded libertarians and
together we started the world’s first company based on free
software.

“But the company we founded did not trade exclusively in
GPL-covered software…”

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