On Sunday, November 11, 2001, at 12:46  PM, Ed Heil wrote:

> Andrew Greenberg writes:
>>
>> More analogy wars.  This one just as offensive than
>> prior comparisons of
>> Squeakers with slavers and mengele.
>
> Andrew, I didn't compare Squeakers to slavers.

and

On Thursday, November 1, 2001, at 12:31  PM, Ed Heil wrote:

> The only thing the GPL prevents you from doing is *LIMITING OTHER
> PEOPLE'S ABILITY TO USE AND MODIFY THE SOFTWARE*.
>
> It's equivalent to a philosophical argument over which country is more
> free -- a country which has laws against slavery, or a country which
> has no laws against slavery?  The latter is more limiting, but the
> former, many would say, is "freer."

We can quibble all we like about what, specifically, Ed was or was not 
saying.  This is one of the reasons these analogy wars accomplish 
nothing.

GPL isn't just "a little bit" restrictive for Smalltalk -- it has impact 
for monolithic object images ranging far beyond the definitions of 
"freedom" proposed here.  A Unix user is free to load, run and 
distribute a proprietary package on a "free" GPL'd system, but would not 
be likewise "free" in Squeak.

GPL has restrictions for monolithic images that make it unworkable for 
Smalltalk systems.  Hence, for us, the definitions of "free" predicated 
upon "a little restriction for good is good," simply ignores, or perhaps 
intentionally obfuscates, these issues.

GPL for Smalltalk has effects so bold and brazen, even FSF does not 
defend those "little restrictions" as viable for Unix.  Indeed, if FSF 
believes so much in the revisionist definitions of "free" proposed here, 
why do they keep LGPL for the C library at all, and not simply require 
that gcc be used only to create GPL'd software?