GPL = Software Socialism

Just a nerdish rant.

I just want to go on the record and say I do not support more than I have to, nor condone the GPL. The GPL is the GNU public licence and it is the socialist manifesto of the software world. It is something that must and should exist but what disturbs me is it's popularity. The GPL is all but synonymous with the concept of open source when in fact it is the cancer of it. Open source simple means that the source is available for you to look at and examine. There are no other rights or obligations that should be allocate with the term. The term is simply an assurance you can know what a specific piece of software is doing if you can read it's source code. This allows you to better understand the software as well as knowledge to reimplement a feature for a competing product. Anything beyond this should be considered beyond the scope of open source.

Back in the early days of software, people had access to the source code to the software that they used which was fine since by and large most users were required to know how to program in order get useful work from a computer. People made changes to software and they exchanged their enhancements freely and without change, it was a small inbred community. But computers proliferated. Some (such as Gill Gates) saw it purely as a money making business and hoarded and controlled their code, each trying to establish a monopoly in their small domain of the software world. Others (such as Richard Stallman) with their socialist ideals and love of their experience in early commune days of the software era took offence to anyone abandoning the commune ideals and schemed to recover from mass exodus of those abandoning the commune ideals and thus created the GNU Public Licence which took ten to fifteen years before achieving great success.

Then there were the tweeners, those that held to no ideal. The tweeners are the people that produced freeware and BSD and similar nominally licensed programs. These are the people that worked for proprietary software businesses by day but produced and gave away useful programs to the community. They did this not because they were compelled to do so by any licence but rather out of a sense of community responsibility. Ironically Richard Stallman's movement snowballed not out of community altruism but rather out egotism and selfishness. Those that could not give without seeing something in return. Those that could not give and bear to see others benefit. That is who embraced the GPL. They took and continue to take code from the BSD moment for their cause and contribute none of it back. The GPL'ers are worse than the proprietaries, because at least the proprietaries are honest.