But because the GPLed program is free as in freedom, the other company who bought the software from us THEN gets the same rights to the software we had, including the right to distribute the software. The next company who needs our modifications can now buy them from us or from our first customer. And if said first customer decides to give the software away for free, then we are out of luck. But of course we can sell our next modifications for US-$ 1 billion again.

And I also think you haven’t completely understood the GPL – please read my comment on your previous blog entry.

Perhaps you meant IBM doesn’t allow GPL Java?

i was a little too broad in my hasty generalization – i think i meant something closer to “they’ve been told not to look at specific gpl’d code that might cause legal issues” – for example they have their own j2se implementation which is not gpl’d so if there were questions about whether it was a derivative of the sun j2se it would be A Bad Thing.

secondly, at the moment, the people i know working on java at ibm are not allowed to look at the sun source because ibm has a policy against using gpl’d code due to the legal implications (a non cleanroom reimplementation is always at risk with the gpl, was re sco). FREEDOM!!!

This is just plain wrong. IBM makes massive contributions to Linux under the GPL. That is what the whole SCO case is all about. SCO claims that IBM has no right to contribute to Linux under the GPL (or at least it was the case, now the case is very muddled as SCO is retreating and trying to find something to hold on to.) Perhaps you meant IBM doesn’t allow GPL Java? I’m not sure that is correct either since IBM is a contributor to Eclipse which is Java based on licensed under the GPL.

As to whether or not the GPL is “free”, that is a silly discussion. GPL is enforced under Copyright law and that makes GPL’d code anything but “free” in what you can do with it. The person who wrote the original code retains the copyright on that code and the person who made changes owns the copyright on those changes. The only thing that gives you the right to distribute GPL’d software is the license which is enforceable only because of copyright laws.

In the US, are you not free since you are required to pay taxes on income? Required to obtain a license to drive a car? How about the requirement of obeying US law to stay free from incarceration? Most people would argue that those limitations on absolute individual freedom does not make you un-free. So there is a cost that is out of your control to be a citizen of the USA yet most people still consider that they have vast individual liberty in the US.

The same thing occurs with the GPL. The license puts restrictions on your right to distribute the software. You can exchange your code changes for the right to modify and distribute someone else’s intellectual property. For most users of the GPL this seems eminently reasonable. There is nothing else but the GPL that gives you the right to modify someone else’s copyrighted GPL’d code. There are other licenses that provide the right to modify and distribute code that don’t have the GPL’s basic code sharing restriction but that doesn’t make code under the GPL inherently un-free any more that some restrictions on individual liberty makes you un-free as a US Citizen.

Let us say that IBM has modified the crap out of the JVM to be totally optimized for their POWER architecture.

firstly, they have their own jvm.

secondly, at the moment, the people i know working on java at ibm are not allowed to look at the sun source because ibm has a policy against using gpl’d code due to the legal implications (a non cleanroom reimplementation is always at risk with the gpl, was re sco). FREEDOM!!!

What on earth gave you the idea that the dictionary definition of freedom is some kind of an absolute good. It’s the kind of definition that you can use to argue for every man’s right to murder, enslave and rape. A free society isn’t generally thought of as permitting those kinds of things. Freedom should not include the ability to remove freedom from others in my opinion. And despite that it can still be called and has been called freedom.

So don’t contribute changes to Sun. You don’t have to under the GPL.

I exactly understand the terms of the GPL and I exactly understand the kind of software community it is attempting to create and preserve.

You clearly do not exactly understand the terms of the GPL, unless your previous question about under what circumstances you have to release your changes was rhetorical.

You also do not understand freedom. Certainly the naive definition of freedom is lack of constraint, but if I am completely unconstrained then I can constrain you. The classic example is that if I am free to own slaves then my slaves are not freer than if I am not free to own slaves. From this we get from “do as you will” to “do as you will and harm none” and the concept of liberty. Or from BSD to the GPL.

The GPL certainly isn’t about the freedom of the software, which is a funny idea of freedom. It is about the freedom of users of the software. But this concept of “use” is that of the hacker sat at a teletype, not the project manager talking to a VC, which again is a funny idea of freedom. If you can’t hack you can’t sell, and with BSD you very quickly can’t hack.