RMS: Proprietary Software Is An Ugly Way Of Life
EFYTimes.com has a nice, short interview up with RMS:
The GNU general public license is a copyleft license. It means that it requires the free distribution (with or without changes) be under the same license. In effect, it says, you can distribute this code to others but you must respect their freedom the same way we respect your freedom. Looking at the same thing from a different point of view, it means that the man who provided a software copy to you must respect your freedom the same way he took advantage of the freedom given to him. Without copyleft, one person or one company can get a copy of the program as free software and put on restrictions and distribute it to you as proprietary software. And then the freedom, which is the purpose of this law will not reach you.
Always nice to hear RMS talk about the GPL and Free Software.
Read the full interview here:
http://news.efytimes.com/e1/79878/Proprietary-Software-Is-An-Ugly-Way-Of-Life-Stallman