Dear FSF,
Bite me.
Let me say this up front, I'm a big fan of open source. Really, I like it. I love being able to find pieces of software that I can grab up and integrate into my personal projects. Building on top of OpenGL (for instance) allows me to build nice graphics without having to reinvent the graphics pipeline, and that's a good thing. Standing on the shoulders of giants allows everyone to gain, and greater advances to be made in a shorter time frame.
What I really hate, Hate, HATE though, are the stupid open source licenses! How can you call it "freeware" when it infects anything that I create with it? That's not freeware, that's "virusware". A gift isn't really free (Free as in beer, or liberty, or cow farts, or whatever other silly analogy that they make over, and over, and over...) unless it comes without stipulations. Otherwise it's bribery and coercion, and that pretty much sums up my opinion of the FSF. Anything created with that bloated and incomprehensible license instantly becomes more of their pod-software, ready to infect other projects.
At this point the situation has gotten so bad that at least one compiler vendor is giving away their compiler (But you must release all created software as open-source!) but is giving a copy away when you buy their "support package" that can be used to create non-open-source software. Huh? How does that work? Their compiler is only open source when you don't pay for it??? That's the kind of situation that this bass-ackwards license produces.
Look, if I give someone a hammer, I don't stipulate whether or not they will release any and all house-building secrets they might have when they sell that house. I can't, and I wouldn't even if I could. It's stupid, and it's infecting all kinds of software now.
Sincerely,
Phaedrus
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