[Asterisk-Users] Re: Advice on OS Choice

[Joe Greco]

> You're a mac user aren't you..   :)

I'm not a Mac user, and I could have written that response.

To further emphasize the message I just finished writing, I do consider the
GPL to be a coercive license, and I fail to see the freedom in coercing
people to release code if they don't want to (or have a good reason not to).

Freedom, by M-W definition:  
----------------------------
1 : the quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity,
coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery
or restraint or from the power of another.
----------------------------

Being forced to distribute my changes violates the words 'necessity',
'coercion', and the phrases 'constraint in choice or action' and
'liberation from [...] restraint or from the power of another'.

GPL pretty much violates the whole primary M-W definition of freedom, unless
you're willing to engage in semantic games.

Of course, I believe people should be allowed to distribute code under any
license they please.  I just find it disturbing that GPL advocates try to 
make their license out to be somehow freer than a nonrestrictive license 
like the BSD which offers a superset of the GPL's rights.

Regards,

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.