From: "Hal E. Fulton" Date: 2003-07-10T04:05:00+09:00 Subject: Re: My brief and torrid affair with Ruby. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel Carrera" To: "ruby-talk ML" Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 1:49 PM Subject: Re: My brief and torrid affair with Ruby. > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 01:29:05AM +0900, Rasputin wrote: > > > If I spend the effort to write code, I think *I* should be allowed to > > choose what to do with it, rather than leave that choice to the author > > of a library I used. That's not free in my book. > > This is exactly what people get wrong about the GPL!!! > The GPL does NOT inhibit your ability to choose what to do with your > work!! > > The GPL does NOT change the license of your work. It is simply not > possible for copyright law to do that, and the GPL doesn't try to. The > GPL will NOT alter the license of your work. We're rather arguing semantics here. Obviously no library can force its use on a developer. Hmm, if it could, that might be profitable. :) Don't give this idea to certain people. The point is that IF YOU DO USE A GPL'd LIBRARY them the GPL *does* force you to change the license (unless you want to remain in non-compliance of the GPL). The alternatives to the GPL'd library may be buggy or inferior or even nonexistent. So your options become: 1. Throw away your project 2. Implement a new library yourself 3. Change license to the GPL Is it any wonder that most people would choose (3)? And in many cases this might be equivalent to (1)... The whole discussion of choices reminds me of two things. Henry Ford commenting on the Model T -- "They can have any color they want, as long as it's black." And my mother at the dinner table when I was a child: "You have two choices. Take it or leave it." :) Hal -- Hal Fulton hal9000@hypermetrics.com