The GNU GPL is not Mr. Nice Guy. It says 'no' to some of the things that people sometimes want to do. There are users who say that this is a bad thing--that the GPL 'excludes' some proprietary software developers who 'need to be brought into the free software community.' But we are not excluding them from our community; they are choosing not to enter. Their decision to make software proprietary is a decision to stay out of our community. Being in our community means joining in cooperation with us; we cannot 'bring them into our community' if they don't want to join. What we can do is offer them an inducement to join. The GNU GPL is designed to make an inducement from our existing software: 'If you will make your software free, you can use this code.' Of course, it won't win 'em all, but it wins some of the time.
More from Richard M. Stallman
The programmers who write improvements to GCC (or Emacs, or Bash, or Linux, or any GPL-covered program) are often employed by companies or universities. When t…
Permalink to quote #45 If you focus your mind on the freedom and community that you can build by staying firm, you will find the strength to do it. 'Stand for something, or you will …
Permalink to quote #47 If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough--you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal. In other words, you need …
Permalink to quote #44