Comments

I mostly agree, but I think there’s a more charitable possible explanation here:

FSF failed because it got stuck in a local maximum. Copyright was a bad tool to protect the commons, but it was also the only tool available.

Maybe we could craft a policy which does a better job freeing up software while still protecting it from corporate hijacking? I’m not sure what it would look like.

It would require politcking. And charismatic speakers that can explain to lay people the importance of software freedom. You have to convince a whole hell of a lot of normies.

the GPL has become so complicated that only a programmer with relatively advanced legal knowledge and ability to read and properly understand “legalese” will be able to decipher it to know what they are able and unable to do with it

I have read the GPL and it is not very complicated. It's long so you need an attention span to understand it but it's written in reasonably plain language and doesn't contain excessive references. It even goes so far as to provide a summary at the beginning.

Free Software is about the four freedoms for users. The gist of the article is that GPL is complicated and that permissive licenses are better suited for the task. But we had so many failures with permissive projects and pre patched GPL licenses:

• Android
• Chromium
• MacOS GNU utils distribution
• Linux kernel locked away in spying smart TVs
• VSCode

Where are failure examples with strong copyleft? Bambu Labs is going to get kicked in the teeth because of AGPL.

sent from my GNU Guix laptop