What's "Linking" under the GPL?
Andrew C. Greenberg
werdna at mucow.com
Fri Nov 2 13:27:21 UTC 2001
On Friday, November 2, 2001, at 03:32 AM, goran.hultgren at bluefish.se
wrote:
> What I react to is more the association of GPL with communism (in it's
> negative forms).
Let's see. GPL requires, and enforces by operation of law and the power
of the state, that anyone using the software must, upon distribution,
share their work derived therefrom with everyone who asks for it.
Whether or not this is deemed by Goran to be a bad thing, it appears he
objects to the use of the term more because it is pejorative than
because it is apt. Just as he appropriates the word "free" for use
with GPL, presumably to capture the salutary connotations of the word,
he quibbles with others who use moderately apt phrases because of
negative connotations therewith.
In fact, GPL cannot stand or fall on wordplay (and that is *ALL* this
thread has been about -- there has yet to be a single substantive
argument as to the benefits of the highly-constrained GPL license for
monolithic Smalltalk image). I argue the devil's advocacy here, not
because I believe GPL is a socialist plot, but to lay naked the fact
that FSF zealots, and their more rational colleagues such as Goran, rely
heavily upon (and therefore react negatively against) a big-brotheresque
newspeak in lieu of argument.
Seriously, Goran. Nobody on this forum sees the questions here as deep
or demonstrating anything other than our desire to debate. I have
begged thus far for a REASON why GPL has anything good to offer the
world where monolithic images lives.
It is plain beyond cavil that if GPL did not permit distribution with
independent blocks of software not GPL'd, or interaction with non-GPL
software at the operating system level, NOBODY ANYWHERE would use it.
Its success depended upon compromising the RMS-free (to distinguish the
term from the ordinary usage) software principles for the realities of a
Unix operating system. He simply decided that there aren't enough folks
using a monolithic image to justify compromising for smalltalk systems.
Thus, whether it is RMS-free or not, it is useless for Smalltalk where
ANY code is not GPL'd. This is, of course, is a really bad thing,
whether it is RMS-free or not.
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