Christian Froeschlin <chr### [at] chrfrde> wrote:
> > read for example their statements about when to use
> > the LGPL and the GPL to see for yourself
>
> by chance, I happened to read it a few days ago. I was also
> surprised by the attitude. It seems like they feel to be in
> competition to commercial software, but why would you worry
> about competition when you make free software anyway? If you
> don't do it for fun, why bother? The only advantage to gain
> is a broader user base and henceforth more fame, but for
> that libs should be LGPL'ed in the first place ;)

From what I gather, the main driving force behind this is the desire of some
software developers, who code for fun or as an aside, to be able to use and
modify other people's software for free as well (I'd call *that* a very
*sneaky* way of piracy, actually).

They are willing to give away their work for free - well, no problem with this,
thanks guys; but they're not willing to pay anything for what they get.

This wouldn't be a problem if they didn't enforce this principle with quite a
lot of success onto other parts of the software world. It is their publicly
declared(!) agenda to "flood" the software market with free software libraries
under the non-virulent LGPL to "drown" commercial alternatives, and then switch
over to the virulent GPL in order to force all software authors that make use of
to those libraries to make their software free as well - even those authors that
would be willing to pay for the functionality provided by the libraries, but
cannot because there are no commercial alternatives anymore.

Yes, I guess "a sneaky way of software piracy" quite hits the mark.


I think the worst about it is that when the FSF and GPL are criticized, the
broad public doesn't get the details of any side's messages, and naively
equates FSF = free software = open source = I don't have to pay for it = good,
and FSF-critics = anti-free-software = commercial = only want to have my money
= bad.

I also wonder how many people releasing their software under the GPL actually
know about the FSF's agenda. But then again, people are greedy, so "free
software for everyone!" sounds like a great message for all those who don't get
paid for their own software development work anyway.

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