From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2003-07-10T05:28:56+09:00
Subject: OT: GPL - was Re: My brief and torrid affair with Ruby.

> > Are you honestly saying that you don't understand
> > why people don't like the GPL?
>
> I can't imagine how I gave you that impression.
>
> I am saying that many of those people have a deep misunderstanding of the
> GPL.
>
> I know that there are many people who do understand the GPL and have good
> reasons not to like it.  I understand these reasons and this is not what I
> have been talking about.  The fact that certain people might have reasons
> not to like the GPL does not make the GPL viral.  It simply makes it a
> license that some people don't like.
>
> What I have been arguing is that the GPL is not viral.
> You might not like it, but it's still not viral.

Well, I personally never said it was viral. In any case,
that is a figure of speech. No one actually believes
that a license reproduces itself magically or even
programmatically.

I know you disagree, but I think this discussion *is*
largely semantic in nature.

I'll summarize my own point of view, then I'll refrain
from adding to this off-topic thread. FWIW, I don't
think we "really" disagree here.

Many times when we say we are "forced" to do something,
we mean that we have chosen an unpleasant option that
was the least unpleasant of all our options. Often the
alternatives are so outrageous as to be eliminated
subconsicously.

"I had to eat broccoli." No, you didn't. You could have
gone hungry.
"I had to buy a black car." No, you didn't. You could
have ridden a horse.
"I had to appear in court." No, you didn't. You could
have become a fugitive.
"I had to hit my brakes." No, you didn't. You could have
simply hit the other car.

Suppose I want to write killer app X, and there is a library
Y (one and only one) that suits my purposes well. The others
are incomplete, buggy, inferior, written in COBOL, whatever.

What I *want* to do is use library Y and put my own app X
under my own FooBar license. Oops! Library Y is GPL.

My choices become:
1. Don't write app X
2. Spend hundreds of man-hours rewriting library Y
3. GPL my app

No, no one is "forced" to pick (3). But often the perception
is that (1) and (2) are even more unthinkable. That is why
people say that they are "forced" to GPL their code.

Of course it's a figure of speech. I have the alternative of
not writing the code, just as I have the alternative of
being a truck driver instead of a programmer, or I have the
alternative of suicide instead of living.

First of all, let's accept the constraints that "I remain a
programmer" and "I don't kill myself" (and an infinite number
of other similar constraints, such as "the Earth is not
destroyed by an asteroid tonight").

Then let's add the constraints that: 1. I write the code;
2. I use the library; 3. I obey the license; then I AM FORCED
to GPL my code. Unless I am in in some bizarre parallel universe
where "A is not A" and there are more than five Platonic solids.

Cheers,
Hal

"Diagonally parked in a parallel universe..."

--
Hal Fulton
hal9000@hypermetrics.com