70 lines
4.5 KiB
HTML
70 lines
4.5 KiB
HTML
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<p>I am very much a GPL advocate, and the more I get into programming the more
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I favour the GPL licenses. I have many reasons for this, some of them
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applying to myself personally, but others that are applicable at a larger
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scale as to how it benefits software creation in general. However, I
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will start out with how I came to use Free Software and why I ended up
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with the mentality towards software licenses I have today.</p>
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<p>For 15 years all I really used were Mac computers, which are Unix based
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systems but still proprietary. It's not practical to imagine I would know
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or care about something like licensing or ethics during this time, I don't
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believe I arrived at the age of reason until I was around 15, and although
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some of my personality and beliefs have changed since then, my thoughts
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have not strayed much from what they were at that age. When I was 15 I got
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my first personal laptop that I could use for my own purposes. It was an
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old laptop that my dad used to use for work, but for work he always used
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GNU/Linux, and the laptop did not have Windows, and even if it did it was
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an old 32-bit computer with 1GB of RAM (I ended up adding another GigaByte
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to that). Even if I wanted to use Windows on there I couldn't because it
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wouldn't run as quickly as GNU/Linux. So this was the first time I ran
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GNU/Linux as a main OS. At this point I didn't care too much about Free
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Software, but I was well on my way to being a Free Software advocate, as my
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political ideology had moved very much left-ward where Free Software can
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almost be considered the licenses of the left-wing.</p>
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<p>After a few years of running GNU/Linux I started to get rid of all the
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Apple products I had (because Apple makes it hard as hell to use their shit
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with anything else that isn't their shit, mostly being the damn iPod I had
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which didn't like syncing with my GNU/Linux machine until I found a
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half-assed hack that got me to fix that shit). At one point I came to the
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conclusion that the reason why Apple products (along with others) did not
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play well with others is because they are non-free and do not allow people
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to create programs that work with their shit (because that means you're
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using someone else's stuff instead of their shit). After this pissed me off
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I personally decided to stop using non-free software as much as I could to
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the point where now the only non-free software on my computer are some
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wireless drivers that I need for my laptop.</p>
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<p>While I used GNU/Linux I also started to get into programming, which is
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where I was exposed to software licenses. Since I was on an old shitty
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computer I couldn't really do much gaming, but I could do a lot of
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programming, so I ended up programming small games that I could play.
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But when the time came to choose a license I decided on the GPL, reason
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being (at the time) that I want people to be able to learn from my code,
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but I don't want people to take advantage of me by grabbing whatever code I
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create and making it proprietary and then improving upon it, as that would
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essentially be stealing my foundations and building on top of it without
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giving back. So I sided with the GPL licenses.</p>
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<p>However, those are only personal reasons that I had at the time, there are
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more reasons that do not affect me personally but are important at a larger
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scale. This being that GPL promotes people to contribute and promotes
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collective improvement to a project instead of everyone making their own
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version of the wheel. If I create code that is useful and then share it
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someone else can use that code to make something that's even better and
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then someone else upon that continuously improving the software. Meanwhile,
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with other licenses such as MIT or BSD people can simply take your code and
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make whatever improvements they make proprietary forcing everyone else to
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have to reinvent that wheel. Of course, attribution license defendants will
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say that many times these entities do return code to its original source,
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and although that is true, I would rather not rely on the good will of a
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few nice people, but rather force everyone to share what they have in order
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to assure that progress can be fluid and continuous.</p>
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<p>I believe that the GPL licenses create a more educational environment and
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that they allow for more progress following the scientific philosophy of
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building upon the shoulders of giants. With that mentality I believe we can
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get much further than what could be created with each of us going our own
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separate ways without having any knowledge of what the other has done.</p>
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