PHPurple 0.1.0 pre-alpha is released

[Luke Schierer]

Anatoliy Belsky wrote:
> yeah, therefore i'm writing "I see the freedom of the GPL in this case as a 
> compulsion". There is nobody on the mailing list, who siad - ok, we could 
> give him a chance with his lunatic idea. why?
> 
> On Monday 03 March 2008 22:27, Daniel Atallah wrote:
>> On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 4:22 PM, Anatoliy Belsky <anatoliy at belsky.info>
>>
>> wrote:
>>> I can word it otherwise - it you always follow the GPL rules, it isn't
>>> always
>>> the best. The world has much more faces ... if you awaiting, that the
>>> world
>>> will be allways as u will, may be, you will be sometimes dissapointed (as
>>> i'm
>>> now) :)
>> I guess this ties into my point about the licensing applying whether or not
>> you like it.
>>
>> -D
> 

For good or for ill, neither we nor any previous developer has required 
that those submitting patches assign copyright to either ourselves or to 
a non-profit.  This means that to grant *any* exception to the license, 
to change it, or even to make it not apply to someone, *everyone* who 
we, or our predecessors, have *ever* accepted even one line of code from 
must agree to the change, or the exception, or the exemption.

This means, in practice, that we are legally bound to not grant any 
exceptions, exemptions so on.  We *cannot* legally speak for all of 
those people.

Yes, that means that at times the GPL acts to compel someone to do 
something (release source code under the GPL) that they do not want to 
do.  That is what the GPL was intended to do, protect the source code 
from those who would download it, and preserve the freedoms of all other 
users from that one.

You may consider this a flaw in the GPL.  Others consider it a strength. 
  Which opinion you hold is irrelevant, the law is the law.

This is precisely true of *all* laws.  For example, some people 
(sociopaths for example) consider the laws forbidding murder to be a 
restriction.  Others consider them a means of preserving freedom (from 
being killed or threated with death). This is an extreme example, but 
holds true of all laws.

luke


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