The GNU GPL

by Tom Morton

The GPL is, in part, explains why I started Code Liberty. It has become one of the most widely used free software licenses in the world with extremely strong support from the Free Software Foundation

In principle I've never really been against the GPL as a choice - it's after all an individuals decision how to license their code. However I believe the GPL has some serious flaws in it's design that can make it a poor choice. Some of the issues I have:

The GPL goes against the freedom to use code however we wish
The GPL places unneeded restrictions on code, therefore is NOT a free software license
The GPL restricts the choice of others when using code

Let's deal with these points as briefly as posible.

Freedom & Free Software

The FSF lays out four freedoms that they think defines Free Software. In fact al four of the freedoms are things that I, as a free software advocate, would support. Ideally we should have the freedom to do those things to software.

The problem is that can we enforce those freedoms? Here the idea of Code Liberty differs from that of the FSF; because I don't think that software which enforces those freedoms is truly free.

More to the point in enforcing one set of freedoms it restricts a further one:

Freedom 4: The freedom to use code as you like

Removing the right to use free code for whatever purpose seems non-free to me!

Of course, the strong argument is that the GPL prevents open source code becoming closed source. It's certainly a gallant argument; closed source is not something we want to encourage.
But, Ironically the FSF identifies the idea of a non-commercial clause as being incompatible with the idea of free software. In fact I think that a non-commercial clause is a better alternative to the GPL; it still prevents the