On 19.07.2017 05:32, Richard Stallman wrote: > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > > Enforced freedom? nobody there was obligated to benefit from freedom. > > What was enforced was the obligation for Cisco to transfer to their > > clients the freedom they decided to enjoy. > > You stated that very well. > > The purpose of copyleft is to defend freedom for all users of our > software. To defend their freedom requires preventing middlemen > (Cisco in that case) from stripping off the freedom when they > redistribute the software to others. > > In other words, when we distribute Emacs to A, > and A redistributes Emacs to B, C and D, copyleft protects > the freedom of B, C and D by requiring > A to pass along Emacs to them with the full four freedoms. > Are two major issues with that idea. 1) the body of enforcement 2) the probability of involuntary license violations For the latter: it looks like distributions of Emacs itself violated the GPL, right? The reason is simple: With growing complexity it will be probable, that binaries and sources differ at some point. Than the distributor risks to be at the mercy of the owner. Now if a violation occurs, who will be the judge?: The very kind of institutions which otherwise found water-boarding a legal thing. Can't see how such a proceeding will match freedom. Whilst Emacs itself remains an excellent tool.