Hey,

Sure, though I may misunderstand here. Imagine that a GPL project is the best viable option for a component where the license’s viral nature comes into play. If a company wishes to use it without holding free software ideals, they can use the license to fulfil the requirement of being open source without trying to respect user freedoms. Worse still, this makes them a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, since they are making their software open source for a less-than-ideological reason (this likely will result in malware which is open source in license only). With a license like the MPL, the true nature of the user is far more on display, since they have to willingly make the rest of their software free (with a choice as to which license they use, allowing more flexibility). In essence, products based on MPL projects must voluntarily support freedom (and hence prove themselves to the user) or show that they are not going to respect freedom more than they must (companies already using open source licenses are usually even harder to demand freedom of, as there are fewer voices speaking). Should we entrust our freedoms to companies forced to make their software open source to respect freedom now and in the future (possibly employing tactics such as EEE to choke out their competition), or should we allow people doing the right thing willingly to have the support they need to avoid being choked out.

I hope this cleared things up,

—Danny

P.S. Huge fan of the GNU project’s work, by the way. While I have one of the two Broadcom cards that don’t have working reverse-engineered drivers and made the horrible mistake of buying a Nvidia card, I try to stick with free software where practical.

On Sat, Apr 2, 2022 at 20:58, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote: