Free? Not so much...

Probably not a big deal for most of you, but I would like to talk about 'free' software for a bit.

Richard Stallman is the man to go to (and blame) for the start of this entire issue. He created a bunch of UNIX-like tools and called them GNU (short for GNU is Not Unix). GNU would go on to become almost a separate OS by itself, only lacking the kernel, and when the Linux kernel came about, hey presto! some few generations later you get Ubuntu.

Now Stallman came up with something called the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), which in its preamble states that the licence is supposed to *give* you rights, not take them away. The GNU Foundation stands for free software, where free stands for 'free as in speech' and not 'free as in beer', although the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In this, Stallman's a bit of an odd cookie, because for a time he was entirely against the entire 'open-source' movement, which called for the sources of all software to be freely available for examination... a necesary byproduct of the GPL.

My point is, free software... isn't. Not if distributed under the GPL, and not especially under GPLv3. It may be free beer software, but it certainly isn't free speech software. Not in the way we understand free speech. You see, the GPL is an infectious licence. If you want to use GPLed software in any significant way in your own project, you also have to release it under GPL, or a GPL-compatible licence. And you had better make sure that you follow every single detail of the licence carefully, otherwise they'll sic their lawyers on you.

Worst of all, many in the FOSS community will do exactly the same thing. It has always struck me as strange that for a bunch of people seemingly against copyrights and patents and making money over software, they are the first to wield the power of the courts. NOw I know that there are many reasons, but essentially, there is no real common ground for these fanatics. You will note that most of the proprietary software companies will release freeware programs, and even work in open source, but watch and see if it works the other way around. It's like watching a software jihad in action, only there is no God but GPL and Stallman is its prophet or something. And oh yes, Microsoft is the Great Satan.

You want a truly free licence? Try this one out.

DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, December 2004

Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long as the name is changed.

DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.

Or, this one.

You can use this code in whatever way you want, as long as you don't try to claim you wrote it.

Let's see some FOSS guys use THOSE licences. Which, by the way, they can - they're valid free software licences, and Debian Linux distros come with software under the WTFPL.