> The GPL also seriously erodes the freedom to earn reward for labor and virtually abolishes the freedom to earn reward due to property ownership. It's a tradeoff that sides with increasing the efficiency of labor (by allowing for reuse). But there's a large body of work on recognized, but unexercisable freedoms because the person lacks the means to exercise it.
Translation: startups can't make their millions by selling a bunch of IP they've cobbled together from GPLed sources. Color me uncaring.
In the end, if you go back to my silly ascii art graph—your argument can be summed up that the individual '->'s lack freedom when the code is GPLed. I agree. But my point is with the GPL, the overall chain has more freedom because there are many more transactions the more arrows there are in the graph and the farther to the right you go (it's really more of a tree, but I collapsed it by node type for brevity).
Looking at the big picture, the GPL grants (almost paradoxically) infinitely more freedom to the world at large by the very fact that it restricts some developer freedoms. The GPL doesn't cater to developers, it was made for the end users.
I'm leaving your last comment above as the conclusion of the discussion. I appreciate the lively sharing of views and enjoyed it (despite the rampant downvoting by others).
Translation: startups can't make their millions by selling a bunch of IP they've cobbled together from GPLed sources. Color me uncaring.
In the end, if you go back to my silly ascii art graph—your argument can be summed up that the individual '->'s lack freedom when the code is GPLed. I agree. But my point is with the GPL, the overall chain has more freedom because there are many more transactions the more arrows there are in the graph and the farther to the right you go (it's really more of a tree, but I collapsed it by node type for brevity).
Looking at the big picture, the GPL grants (almost paradoxically) infinitely more freedom to the world at large by the very fact that it restricts some developer freedoms. The GPL doesn't cater to developers, it was made for the end users.