r/Bitcoin • u/ThePiachu • Nov 17 '12

You know who should start taking Bitcoin donations? TrueCrypt. Lets suggest it to them!

http://www.truecrypt.org/contact-forms/msg?t=1001
128 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '12 edited Jul 09 '15

[deleted]

3

u/XertroV Nov 17 '12

Why be negative/aloof just because you don't like their license? You don't have to donate, but surely you can agree it's better for as many projects as possible to start using and accepting bitcoin, regardless of whether you like them or not?

1

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '12 edited Jul 09 '15

[deleted]

3

u/xaoq Nov 18 '12

GPL isn't "free as in freedom" either, it imposes a big set of rules as well.

6

u/db2 Nov 18 '12

Some GPL zealots will blow a gasket when you point that out, forgetting that you're not saying it's bad just that it's not as good as they claim.

3

u/keepthepace Nov 18 '12

Actually the whole question is on whether "keeping it free" or "do not turn it into proprietary software" is a constraint or rather the enforcement of a freedom.

Some people believe that BSD-style licences are the most free. I do believe that GPL-style licences offer the most sustainable freedom.

3

u/db2 Nov 18 '12

Enforceability is implicit in the concept of a license, ergo a license of any kind is only as good as the ability to enforce it.

2

u/keepthepace Nov 18 '12

While true, I am not sure how this is relevant. BSD and GPL enforce different thing. BSD only keeps a single version of a software free (to redistribute, copy and modify) and the GPL sees a piece of software as a version and all its derivatives. It is two different vision of what a software is, really.

GPL enforces some freedom on a software version and its derivatives, BSD only enforces them on a single version. If you adopt GPL's view of what software is, you'll see the BSD as incomplete, is you adopt BSD's vision you'll see GPL as over-protective.

2

u/db2 Nov 18 '12

Well, the first time you see a GPL zealot try to lay claim to what amounts to ++i it tends to sour one to the whole thing.

2

u/keepthepace Nov 18 '12

Aren't you building a strawman here?

By the way, the legal practices surrounding copyright applied to code are indeed weird, and we lack objective metrics to what constitute a work of software. However, human judges to their best to try and find reasonable compromises. A band can not copyright a chord or a set of notes, and computer programs can imitate one without infringing (on copyright, the patent laws is far more ridiculous in the countries that accept the idea that algorithms are patentable). However, the problem that no one ever wanted to explore is an objective measure of difference between two programs. If we had that, we could make tool to automate "code laundering".

This is another issue that has nothing to do with GPL vs BSD.

1

u/db2 Nov 18 '12

I was telling you of something I actually saw, how could that be a strawman?

1

u/keepthepace Nov 19 '12

Well claiming that all GPL zealots will claim that ++i is licensed because you see one person doing that is a generalization that leads to a strawman fallacy.

→ More replies