[Discuss] licensing: who freakin cares?

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Rich Pieri)]

On 4/9/2016 4:14 PM, Eric Chadbourne wrote:
> I bet most of you really don't care.  I know most non-tech humans
> couldn't care less.

True. They want their kit to work. That's usually the highest priority,
although the tolerance for bugs and crashes has long since become
disturbing to me.

Second highest is that their kit interoperates with their co-workers'
and cow-orkers' kits, their friends' and family members' kits and so forth.

Heck, most tech humans want these things, too.

The reason why I think you are mistaken about not caring about the
license is that RMS and his closest adherents believe that these cares
are irrelevant. I have RMS on record stating that free (as in FSF)
software that does not work is superior to proprietary software. I have
RMS on record stating that he cannot impose discipline on volunteer
coders, that he cannot enforce QA/QC practices on GNU software
developers, because doing so would violate their freedoms.

Think about it. Think about what the world would be like if all of the
software we use was up to these standards of no coding discipline, no
quality assurance. Think about all of the machines and devices in our
lives with computers embedded in them. Think about them running software
that has never been verified & validated for these uses. Think about
them running software that has never been tested beyond compiling
without errors and not immediately core dumping on start. This is the
world that RMS wants to bring about, and every time you apply the GPL to
your own work you bring the world one step closer.

I care about licensing because I don't want RMS's "users' utopia" to
come to pass.

-- 
Rich P.