GPL is bad for us all

Lior ShalmayLior Shalmay
2 min read

There is some hypocrisy among the GNU community, while they fight for user's "freedom" and "protect" it, the end result is the complete opposite freedom is taken both from the end users and from the open source code developers.

For the end user the freedom is taken by the form of less features available on the distriputed software, because there are certain features that come from libraries/source code that are incompatible with GNU license so when recieving a GNU protectedbinary (and vice versa), you have less features, and if you want the lost features back, you need to compile the software from source, without the GNU protected parts which can sometimes be very tidious and praticly imposiable for novice users.
In example, the git openssl backend is not available when git is linked with GNU, because openSSL is incompatible with GNU.Forcing the end user to compile git himself (not an easy task) and this will occur in any GNU based linux distribution which is insane. In contrast using Apple's propriety software gives the user better experience because there are no GNU shenanigans.

For the developer the rapist conditions that the GNU license imposes leaves the developer with 3 unattractive options:

The first option is to ignore any GPL protected code, thus limiting his available options to incorporate from the open source community. So his freedom is taken by limiting the available options which are in the firstplace shared so the community/humanitycan enjoy the code/solution that have already been written.

The second option that the devloper has is to surrender to GPL's license thus making his entire code protected by GPL's licenseand now he is raping his users to use GPL's license.

The third option that the developer has is to find ways around the licnse (which is getting harder and harder with each generation),experience which is similar to navigating in a mine field, especially when developers are not usualy lawyers and independentdevelopers usually do not have the resources nor time to deal with open source licenses, leaving them wihtout freedom.

In conclusion, the end result is that the GPL licenses "eat" other less restrictive licenses and forcing any project that "touches" a GPL software to also become a GPL software so over time more and more projects are licensed under GPL making itharder and harder to not use GPL code each passing day. When will this madness stop? When will developer start complain against the rapist conditions that GPL3 license imposes?

GNU please change you conditions to more senseable conditions that will benefit both the developers and the end users.

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Lior Shalmay
Lior Shalmay