Re: OwnCloud's Collapse
 

I'm sorry to all the others. Pichlo, I know you long enough to realize you're trolling now just for the fun of it (and for some other reasons...) - But as I've studied law and see so many common misconceptions of the uneducated concentrated in this one paragraph, let me just correct a few. Maybe those who really fell into your trap can learn from it.

Stallman's ideas about free software are stict and he's not the one who makes compromises. Personally, I admire him for that. But not making compromises doesn't mean being a dictator unless you have the power to force people into doing something. Stallman doesn't have any such power, so calling him a dictator is cheap propaganda and an personal insult not only towards him, but also towards those who support his ideas. (Speaking about power: Stallman's only power is to convince people with his words. Given how - well, how to put it... "non-mainstream" his appearance is, it speaks for his ideas how many people he has convinced so far.)

About reducing one single person's rights for the greater good: That's what communities, societies do. That's what we call civilisation. We restrict your right to kill unpleasant neighbours. This reduces your freedom and can make for some unpleasant saturday evenings at home, but society agreed that in general it's the better way to go. We also restrict your right to drive your car the way you want, no matter where, no matter how fast. There are one-way-streets, speed limits, stop signs. Again, societies implement such regulations because they find that while they hold disadvantages for some individuals at certain times, in general there are more benefits. Restrictions imposed by free software licenses aren't even compulsory the way traffic regulations are. You can easily escape them by using different software. But there's a community (a society) that decided for itself (from experience): The advantages outweigh the disadvantages by far. In the particular case of software, you can leave this community rather than break the rules and try to cherry pick.

The brick example doesn't work the way you describe it. Juiceme has said pretty mauch anything there is to say: It's not about what you do with the bricks. It's what you do with possible changes you make to the way bricks are produced. It's all about ideas and information. The crucial part is that the chain must not be broken: There were 100 people before who shared their information and ideas for free so that you could use their common work for your benefit. They did so under the condition that, if you had a great idea to improve it, you'd share it back, and they trusted you in this. - Now you call those people "dictators" and want to keep the outcome for yourself, even though maybe your own input was minimal. How on earth can you even try to excuse such behaviour with a "fight for freedom against dictatorship"?

Re: OwnCloud's Collapse
 

Believe me or not, I was not trolling. I stand behind my objections to Stallman's ideas. A software is a thing and the idea of granting the software some freedom is a logical nonsense.

You say he does not have any power other than words. Well praise the Lord. Imagine the world in which he did. We have just seen in my own country how much damage people with "no more power than just words" can do. We have seen similar examples multiple times throughout Europe in the course of past century.

I concede that "a dictator" is inaccurate and I apologize. How does "a potential dictator" work for you?

EDIT:
I typed the above in a hurry before I had to rush around my kids. I also punctured a tyre in the rush so you can say I was punished for my heresy. But the point is I did not the time have to address this bit properly:

I have no objections to that. But now I start understanding where you come from. I was coming from the exactly opposite angle. Imagine I write some piece of SW and want to make it public. Completely free, under no conditions. Be my guest, do whatever you want. I call that freedom. But not Mr Stallman. It is not free unless he says it is. And he say I must impose some conditions. Freedom? Bah humbug.

Re: OwnCloud's Collapse
 

Nobody keeps you from publishing your software under whatever license (or none at all, which I wouldn't recommend for legal reasons). Not even Mr. Stallman. He does not say that you must impose restrictions. For one-man-projects, writing code and throwing it out of the window upon the unwashed masses of the internet is probably not so much of a problem. (As long as you can live with the idea that somebody adds 2 tiny, but crucial missing bits that you have overlooked, sells the software under a proprietary license and makes a fortune from your work without you even knowing, let alone get your share.)

However, even with your own project that doesn't include other people's contributions, you could end up in nasty situations if somebody else builds upon your code. As I said, I studied law and I know how strange things can get. (Like: Depending on the circumstances, a company that used your code for commercial purposes can drag you to court and try to make you stop publishing it, change its name or whatever.) Protecting the freedom of the code prevents such things.

GPL/LGPL are more important, though, with bigger projects. Whenever a group of developers (or companies) work together like they do, for example, on the kernel, they'll most likely want to keep each other from taking their collective work and run away with it. Both licenses turned out to be remarkably smart when it cames to balance the interests of all parties involved. The rise of what you call Linux (be it on servers, desktops, phones or in embedded devices) would never have been possible hadn't the license forced commercial vendors to share back all the improvements and changes they made for their respective use cases. Also, you mustn't forget that before the GPL, there were more or less permissive licenses. I remember times when each software project had its own. It was impossible then to compile a set of tools without breaking some of the licenses involved. The clever design of the GNU makes things a lot easier here.