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1. Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism {#copyleft-pragmatic-idealism .chapter}
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Every decision a person makes stems from the person’s values and goals.
People can have many different goals and values; fame, profit, love,
survival, fun, and freedom, are just some of the goals that a good
person might have. When the goal is a matter of principle, we call that
idealism.
My work on free software is motivated by an idealistic goal: spreading
freedom and cooperation. I want to encourage free software to spread,
replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make
our society better.[(1)](#FOOT1)
@firstcopyingnotice{{@footnoterule Copyright © 1998, 2003 Free Software
Foundation, Inc.\
{This version of this essay is part of @fsfsthreecite}
That’s the basic reason why the GNU General Public License is written
the way it is—as a copyleft. All code added to a GPL-covered program
must be free software, even if it is put in a separate file. I make my
code available for use in free software, and not for use in proprietary
software, in order to encourage other people who write software to make
it free as well. I figure that since proprietary software developers use
copyright to stop us from sharing, we cooperators can use copyright to
give other cooperators an advantage of their own: they can use our code.
Not everyone who uses the GNU GPL has this goal. Many years ago, a
friend of mine was asked to rerelease a copylefted program under
noncopyleft terms, and he responded more or less like this: “Sometimes I
work on free software, and sometimes I work on proprietary software—but
when I work on proprietary software, I expect to get *paid.*”
He was willing to share his work with a community that shares software,
but saw no reason to give a handout to a business making products that
would be off-limits to our community. His goal was different from mine,
but he decided that the GNU GPL was useful for his goal too.
If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not
enough—you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal. In
other words, you need to be “pragmatic.” Is the GPL pragmatic? Let’s
look at its results.
Consider GNU C++. Why do we have a free C++ compiler? Only because the
GNU GPL said it had to be free. GNU C++ was developed by an industry
consortium, MCC, starting from the GNU C compiler. MCC normally makes
its work as proprietary as can be. But they made the C++ front end free
software, because the GNU GPL said that was the only way they could
release it. The C++ front end included many new files, but since they
were meant to be linked with GCC, the GPL did apply to them. The benefit
to our community is evident.
Consider GNU Objective C. NeXT initially wanted to make this front end
proprietary; they proposed to release it as ‘`.o`’ files, and let users
link them with the rest of GCC, thinking this might be a way around the
GPL’s requirements. But our lawyer said that this would not evade the
requirements, that it was not allowed. And so they made the Objective C
front end free software.
Those examples happened years ago, but the GNU GPL continues to bring us
more free software.
Many GNU libraries are covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License,
but not all. One GNU library which is covered by the ordinary GNU GPL is
Readline, which implements command-line editing. I once found out about
a nonfree program which was designed to use Readline, and told the
developer this was not allowed. He could have taken command-line editing
out of the program, but what he actually did was rerelease it under the
GPL. Now it is free software.
The programmers who write improvements to GCC (or Emacs, or Bash, or
Linux, or any GPL-covered program) are often employed by companies or
universities. When the programmer wants to return his improvements to
the community, and see his code in the next release, the boss may say,
“Hold on there—your code belongs to us! We don’t want to share it; we
have decided to turn your improved version into a proprietary software
product.”
Here the GNU GPL comes to the rescue. The programmer shows the boss that
this proprietary software product would be copyright infringement, and
the boss realizes that he has only two choices: release the new code as
free software, or not at all. Almost always he lets the programmer do as
he intended all along, and the code goes into the next release.
The GNU GPL is not Mr. Nice Guy. It says no to some of the things that
people sometimes want to do. There are users who say that this is a bad
thing—that the GPL “excludes” some proprietary software developers who
“need to be brought into the free software community.”
But we are not excluding them from our community; they are choosing not
to enter. Their decision to make software proprietary is a decision to
stay out of our community. Being in our community means joining in
cooperation with us; we cannot “bring them into our community” if they
don’t want to join.
What we *can* do is offer them an inducement to join. The GNU GPL is
designed to make an inducement from our existing software: “If you will
make your software free, you can use this code.” Of course, it won’t win
’em all, but it wins some of the time.
Proprietary software development does not contribute to our community,
but its developers often want handouts from us. Free software users can
offer free software developers strokes for the ego—recognition and
gratitude—but it can be very tempting when a business tells you, “Just
let us put your package in our proprietary program, and your program
will be used by many thousands of people!” The temptation can be
powerful, but in the long run we are all better off if we resist it.
The temptation and pressure are harder to recognize when they come
indirectly, through free software organizations that have adopted a
policy of catering to proprietary software. The X Consortium (and its
successor, the Open Group) offers an example: funded by companies that
made proprietary software, they strived for a decade to persuade
programmers not to use copyleft. When the Open Group tried to make
X11R6.4 nonfree software,[(2)](#FOOT2) those of us who had resisted that
pressure were glad that we did.
In September 1998, several months after X11R6.4 was released with
nonfree distribution terms, the Open Group reversed its decision and
rereleased it under the same noncopyleft free software license that was
used for X11R6.3. Thank you, Open Group—but this subsequent reversal
does not invalidate the conclusions we draw from the fact that adding
the restrictions was *possible.*
Pragmatically speaking, thinking about greater long-term goals will
strengthen your will to resist this pressure. If you focus your mind on
the freedom and community that you can build by staying firm, you will
find the strength to do it. “Stand for something, or you will fall for
anything.”
And if cynics ridicule freedom, ridicule community…if “hard-nosed
realists” say that profit is the only ideal…just ignore them, and use
copyleft all the same.
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