Re: Mathworks hosting GPL'd software

[Mike Miller]

On Fri, 19 Feb 2010, forkandwait wrote:

> By using a BSD license, one does NOT restrict the software so licensed 
> -- in fact, the BSD license is LESS restricted, in that a commercial 
> company can fold the code into a product, copyRIGHT that product, and 
> resell it with full restrictions like hidden source and licensing (Mac 
> OS X, for example).  Such behavior is directly prohibited by the GPL.
>
> By using a BSD license, though, you wind up allowing a continuing 
> ecology of copyrighted and restricted software, while the GPL actively 
> fights it.


With BSD you get more freedom.  GPL restricts freedom.  If software were 
guns, and I gave you a gun under the GPL, you would be allowed to do 
almost anything you wanted with your gun, but under the BSD license your 
freedom would expand to allow you to shoot me with it.

It's like the freedom GWB was incessantly concerned about:  The freedom of 
the powerful to amass ever more power and use it to crush everything in 
their way.

Mike