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The GPL is Harmful

One of the most heinous trends in the computing world today is the use of the GNU General Public License. In fact, the license is itself a virus. The whole of the problems with it stem from clause 2b, which reads:

You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

What this means is that if I'm working on a program, and I use even one function from a GPLed program, not only do I have to redistribute the program I took code from, but my entire project must now fall under the GPL and be released into the public domain.

Why is this bad? Isn't this just helping the coder of the original program to maintain control over his work and prevent it being abused to make someone else rich? No. That goal could be reached easily by only requiring that the user of the code release only that code as source along with the other program and requiring the user of the code to negotiate a licensing agreement with the original coder if the new program contained a significant amount of his code.

Truly "free" software doesn't force you to adopt a license and give up your rights to intellectual property. Forcing you to release all of your source code, in addition to the code you might have used, comes at a very high price, up to and including loss of patent rights. Giving up your intellectual property rights is an incredible price to pay. For this reason, large companies (the ones RMS fears will get rich off GPL software) avoid GPL code like the plague; they have the resources to develop in-house anything that GPLware might have given them.

So who gets hurt then? Why the very people RMS wants to protect of course. Small-time coders and low-budget operations- the poor if you will- who can't afford to spend the resources on developing their own code, are suckered into using GPL code in products. They are subsequently forced to give up the one thing that could have stopped their being low-budget: their intellectual property rights, now forfeited to the GPL virus.

Naturally this doesn't bother RMS. You see, RMS is a socialist at best, and a communist at worst. Look at some of his comments which reveal his true agenda:

If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution. Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results. If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs...

The real reason programmers will not starve is that it will still be possible for them to get paid for programming; just not paid as much as now...

In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the post-scarcity world, where nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living. People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a week on required tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot repair and asteroid prospecting. There will be no need to be able to make a living from programming.

So you see, RMS wants to make programming a profession that pays little monetary reward in exchange for social contribution instead. This is what the books call "socialism". Using a software license with a political agenda of this magnitude is unconscionable. Cooperation with RMS is impossible.

If you think I'm exaggerating about corporations avoiding the GPL like the plague because of loss of intellectual property, read the words of Terry Lambert:

To many in the commercial community, the GPL is poison. It represents the potential for dilution of intellectual property, including patents.

When the startup I work for was acquired by a large patent-owning company, we were required to purge our product of GPL'ed code so as to not dilute patents held by that corporation (the particular case in question was the requirement that we remove the SQUID proxy server). This was a non-negotiable deal breaker.

Other companies in our market niche, even though we were the market leader in both units and mindshare, were seen as more attractive by the purchasing company -- until it was revealed that they had incorporated code unacceptably licensed under the GPL, and not removable in the time to market window.

As things now stand, the purchasing company pays significant lip-service to Linux in the press; this is to obtain press, and is not in support of the GPL. If one wishes to use GPL'ed code for any purpose in company products, it must be completely severable, and it is required that you take a company educational course on use of the code; this mostly boils down to an 18 page presentation on how to treat GPL'ed code as if it were barely sub-critical nuclear waste. In addition, it is required that this code be obtained from internal company FTP server, rather than the Internet at large, so that it has been verified as not incorporating any company patents at the time it a snapshot is taken for the project for which you wish to use it.

What's even more amusing about the FSF Nazis is they proclaim constantly how evil Microsoft is, and how mean it was of them to give away Internet Explorer to destroy Netscape. Here's an ironic commentary about that from Brett Glass:

GPL considered harmful.... Yes, the explicit purpose of the GPL is to hurt programmers' livelihoods. See Richard Stallman's essay, "The GNU Manifesto," for a frank statement that this is the case. Mr. Stallman does not care whether the programmers harmed by the GPL are working for Microsoft or trying to eke out an honest living despite Microsoft; he wishes to put all of them out of business. Trouble is, it's much easier to hurt the little guy than it is to hurt Microsoft, so guess who suffers?

It is, in fact, ironic just how much the FSF's strategies resemble those of Microsoft.

Microsoft seeks to put other companies such as Netscape out of business by giving away free equivalents of every product they make. The Free Software Foundation seeks to put other companies out of business by giving away free equivalents of every products they make.

Bill Gates has all the money he wants but is motivated by a lust for power and control. Richard Stallman has all of the money he wants but is motivated by a lust for power and control.

Microsoft has a vast hoard of software whose development and licensing it controls. The FSF has an even larger hoard of software whose development and licensing it controls.

Meet the new boss -- same as the old boss.

So yes, the GPL is harmful. It forces its twisted political agenda upon others, robs individuals of their intellectual property, spreads itself like a virus, and causes the same kind of predatory behaviour that its proponents lament. It must be avoided at all cost.

---Nick