> > GPL cannot work with a monolithic image, unless you were to dictate
> > that all Smalltalk code thereby developed was also GPL'd.  This is
> > why for Smalltalk, GPL cannot be considered free, or even practical.
> 
> It is free and practical for those who want a GPL world. I am not one 
> of them, so there is no need to try to make me change my mind. But I 
> can understand RMS and friends. Imagine you write a neat program in 
> VisualBasic and give it away for free. Your program won't run on its 
> own, but needs the whole Win32 OS and a certain version of VBRUN.DLL, 
> both of which are available under non free licenses. Depending on what 
> Microsoft does in the future, having your sources might not be enough 
> for people to be able to run your program. Only by having *everything* 
> your program depends on also be free can you avoid this problem.
> 

What you say is mostly true for binaries, but not really for source
code.  If you have the source code for that program, then you can port
it to a new system.  You'll never be completely hosed.  The source for
the program itself is enough to give you a safety net, but GPL insists
that you *also* have the source for various other semi-related pieces of
software.


-Lex