> the best solution is going to be the freedom for people to sell commercial closed software as well as use open software.
The "freedom" you're describing involves government-granted monopolies enforced by pervasive surveillance, unannounced office raids to audit licenses, serial numbers to ensure trackability of all CD-R media, and prosecution of people for disabling malicious software running on their own computers. Certainly it's a kind of freedom; but can't we do better?
Stallman had a slightly different viewpoint about that "freedom":
The "freedom to choose a license" which denies others essential
freedoms is not really a freedom. It is a form of power, of
domination over others. Your description makes it sound like a
matter of individual freedom by obscuring the presence of the
others in the situation.
The GPL is designed to protect the essential freedoms for everyone,
by denying anyone the power to take them away.
(He wrote that in 1999, but I imagine he still feels the same way.)
The "freedom" you're describing involves government-granted monopolies enforced by pervasive surveillance, unannounced office raids to audit licenses, serial numbers to ensure trackability of all CD-R media, and prosecution of people for disabling malicious software running on their own computers. Certainly it's a kind of freedom; but can't we do better?
Stallman had a slightly different viewpoint about that "freedom":
The "freedom to choose a license" which denies others essential freedoms is not really a freedom. It is a form of power, of domination over others. Your description makes it sound like a matter of individual freedom by obscuring the presence of the others in the situation.
The GPL is designed to protect the essential freedoms for everyone, by denying anyone the power to take them away.
(He wrote that in 1999, but I imagine he still feels the same way.)