Freedom!

From Matthew Garrett's blog:

Where do we draw the line between allowing and protecting freedoms?

In my opinion, That isn't the right question. The right question is 'Where do we draw the line between allowing and forbidding freedoms', and the answer is 'between "is this a good freedom, or a bad one?"'

Way back, long before I was involved with computers (let alone Free Software), I once had a conversation about freedom with someone who held a degree in philosophy. I don't remember much from that conversation, but there's one little thing I do remember:

Give some more freedom to one person, and you'll be taking away some freedom from someone else in return.

His point was that you can't give people the right to freely do anything they like. If I am not restricted in what I do, I'll be allowed to steal your car. If I am free to do as I please, I don't have to be careful with matches, and don't have to be sorry if you owned a bookstore before I passed along. If my freedom is unlimited, I can take software, copy it, and forget about the source. Or the list of authors. Or the license. Heck, I could add my name to it without actually doing anything. Why should I? I'm free to do as I please, right?

Obviously, that isn't how things work. Freedom is good, but having the right freedoms is better. It is not a good idea to allow everyone every possible freedom; we should consider what freedoms we think are more important than others, and base our judgement on that.

I could just not care about what people choose to do with the source I write, and place my source in the public domain; however, I choose to care. Similarly, I could just not care about possible patent infringement lawsuits from people I've never met; however, I choose to care. I do happen to think that providing binaries without source is to be frowned upon; I do happen to think that applying for software patents is to be frowned upon.

To put it otherwise: I don't think the freedom to keep a program's source to myself, and get rich and famous on the back of other people is a good freedom, so I don't care about a license which forbids me to do such things. Similarly, I don't think the freedom to apply for a software patent, and get rich and hated on the back of other people is a good freedom, so I don't care about a license which forbids me to do such things.

Nor do I think Debian should. After all, we're not one of the BSD's, where the freedom to take the source and hide it is cherished. I would be amused if they'd change their license to forbid software patents, though...