OT, but I once asked Stallman if he would ever consider whether it would be allowable for people to add an ethics clause to their GPL'd code. I was very disappointed he ostensibly ducked the question(*) , but made it clear that as far as he was concerned, it was more important that the software be free than people be prevented from using that software for uses which might impact on 'freedom, democracy, and giving everyone a comfortable life'.ras.s wrote:I kind of like this recent quote from Richard Stallman: "I can tell you something about free software 5 years from now: most of it will be the same as today. Free software does not change rapidly. (I think that is a feature; our society teaches people to overvalue innovation so as to distract them from more important things such as freedom, democracy, and giving everyone a comfortable life)."
That man is a programmer who deserves the Nobel peace prize.
(* to be specific, he asked for an example of what I meant, and I gave one of someone who didnt want their software usable for the military. His response foccussed on the fact that he had no issues with the military (in fact he said he supported it, so not really my own peace prize candidate there), which absolutely missed the point. I tried to supply a different example but he then followed up by basically saying that even if people who I absolutely didn't want to use my software used my GPL'd software, they'd have to supply their source code changes, so that was all ok. The license was important, the ultimate application of the software was not)