iPhone restricts users, GPLv3 frees them

[Anthony Morton]

>> I'm reluctant to buy into arguments about what is and isn't 'free 
>> software', and I can see that BSD licensed software is 'free' in ways 
>> that GPL software isn't and vice versa.  And I don't necessarily see 
>> any merit in the FSF-vs-iPhone stuff.  At the same time, if the FSF 
>> had operated as a closed shop instead of publishing all their code 
>> they could hardly be less control-freakish than they are,
>
> I am sorry to be so dense but this last sentence I don't grok.  Must 
> be the late hours.
>
>> and yet they'd just be behaving like a typical software company.
>
> And behaving like a typical software company is bad, how?  Most of the 
> software most of us use came from one or more "typical software 
> company."

Yep, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with typical software 
companies.  But they don't allow you to use their code in your own 
projects.  FSF could have gone the same way, and what I was trying to 
say above is that this would have made them *more* 'control-freakish' 
by any reasonable definition - since you can hardly assert more control 
over your code than by keeping it secret.

I guess what I'm getting at is there's a continuum of control over IP, 
with the closed shop at one end and the BSD anarchistic approach at the 
other.  GPL is in the middle - it gives the originator more control 
than other OSS licences, but less control than with a closed-source 
approach.

Tony M.