Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jul 28, 2008, Antonio Olivares <olivares14031 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> What if the bad guys already made a great deal of money and then
> they declare themselves bankrupt?

Then what?  What does this have to do with the GPL?

> They have already taken advantage of the free code available and
> make their own proprietary programs and not give anything bad.

Users who accepted these restrictions were harmed, indeed.  Society
missed an opportunity to get their contributions, indeed.  That's
quite unfortunate, indeed, but there's nothing special about the GPL
in this situation.

> This is very true but unfortunate.  Businesses and developers need
> something that will protect them and make the abusers pay.

How about users conscious of the importance of freedom?

Then abusers wouldn't even make the money in the first place.

But to this end people need to learn about freedom, and why they
should care about it.  That's why it is so important that you and
everyone help spread these ideas.  Just by using the term GNU/Linux,
you'll get several opportunities to talk about it and spread
awareness.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}