Still no new license -- but draft text available

[Pat McCann]

"John W. Stevens" <jstevens at basho.fc.hp.com> writes (concerning GPL):

> Or are you trying to say that any political system that defines and
> punishes criminal behavior is by definition not free?

He'd have more reason to say that than to accept Stallman's (or the 
GNU community's) private definition.  It would at least meet the
definition of dictionary created outside your community.  As for the
fuzzy definition used in normal English, that comes a lot closer to
the BSDL's "your free to use it freely as long as you don't sue me" than
to the GPL's "your free to use it in certain ways as long as you don't
sue me or this and that and another thing" for several thousand words.

> [ long discussion of personal freedom in software usage ]

I was suprised to see your long discussion didn't morph away from the
concept of "personal freedom" and into "software freedom" like most do.
You have better debating skills than most people who eventually realize
the absurdness of a claim that the GPL gives anyone more freedom than
the common non-copyleft open source licenses.

There is a shred of reason to the claim that the GPL gives, say, your
FuBar program, the freedom not to be enslaved by my closed license.
Unfortunately, it also takes away its freedom to benefit from my
modifications or give birth to my child BarFu since I won't put such
restrictions on my unpaid work.  As propaganda, the concept works, but
as a reason to copyleft, its just silly.  Which is probably why it is
always hiding behind the personal freedom concept.