All freedoms are inherently subjective: freedom from slavery is a restriction on owning other people. This is why this discussion is so hard: the people who have to choose a license are the people who have to give up freedoms for others to be more free. One argument is that the second groups of people (end users) happens to superset the first group of people (developers) and is fundamentally larger. To maximize freedom thereby would have the developers "take the hit" (although again: developers are users, too). This is, in fact, precisely what I spent so much time a few months ago discussing: I encourage you to read what I wrote then, such that I need not repeat myself endlessly here. To be very clear: I directly address your entire concern about relative and subjective freedom in that precious discussion.
As for your comments on the short vs. long term issues related to "#_advances_open_sourced", I think that is an interesting discussion to have at another time, as it is off-topic today: Stallman, as I have argued, does not care about attempts to maximize "value" in the way you have defined it, whether in the short or long term; instead, he has defined "value" as "freedom", and I imagine (or at least hope) that a future where mankind is living without all the fancy toys we have, but where the things we have we actually own ourselves, with nothing between us and modifying those things in the way we please would be a "win". All attempts to maximize the thing you care about are, to him, probably nothing more than a distraction. Again: that's not to discredit the things you care about; it is only to say that the goals themselves are mere opinions that people have, and that to understand others requires thinking in their terms.
I think you've fairly accurately portrayed Stalman and the FSF. But, I don't care very much if Stalman wants x or y in the world. I'm less concerned with debating his intent in a literature review way than I am with choosing the licenses that lead to the best outcome for humanity in the future. The question shouldn't be what he wants, except to the extent that it inform the larger question of "what is good for society." So I don't see why you would think that my rubrik for what is best for society is off topic here.
"I have a right to own slaves" is a bad analogy, it doesn't mirror the kinds of trade offs we're discussing here. Slavery is not a case of balancing rights between two people, it is a case of one person's supposed right negating all rights in the other person. It's not very dissimilar from "I have the right to kill."
A copyright license is not a case of balancing rights between two people.
The GPL can be described in pure terms of personal rights provided to the recipient of the software. It declare that a user has the right to be left alone when they run, modify or share the program. That naturally include not being harassed by legal or technical measures by whoever provided them with a copy, be that version modified or not.
There is no trade offs between different parties. The right to be left alone, or negative rights as its called by philosophers and political scientists[1], has a long history. It is also not a balancing act. It is simply Classical liberalism.
BSD gives the rights for a specific copy. GPL gives that rights for that specific program, and thus exist in all copies.
Copy != program.
If I take Firefox and make it Iceweasel, it is still Firefox but under a few changes. It is still the program that Mozilla developers built, and it is still the result of the hard work they spent.
> So I don't see why you would think that my rubrik for what is best for society is off topic here.
It is off-topic because it assumes that other people share your rubric. It is off-topic because it ignores the real question, which is whether that rubric is even the correct rubric to have. It is off-topic because it has nothing to do with whether Stallman should have said the things that he did. Let's say that someone else showed up, and said "we should be trying to optimize for money in Apple's bank account; instead of GPL, which seems extreme, we can strike a better balance that provides more money into Apple's bank account". Do any of us here care about the amount of money in Apple's bank account?
My contention is that caring about how much software in the world is open source, or how much software in the world exists, or what powers mankind has given access to that software, is an interesting and potentially valid rubric; and, it seems to be at least a major component of your rubric. Sadly, this means you are thereby doomed to spend forever arguing over how to best make tradeoffs to help you optimize for that rubric when dealing with people like Stallman. You will bring up that rubric, and they will seem incompetent to you, because they just don't get it: "they are throwing away so much value".
And they, in turn, will look at you as naive, because you are attempting to optimize for something they don't care about and would be perfectly happy to throw away entirely. Trying to argue whether, in the long term, BSD or GPL (for example; feel free to insert any decision that must be made instead) is good or bad for that specific rubric is entirely irrelevant to them, because even if BSD was amazing for that rubric, and even if GPL was miserable for it, at the end of the discussion the GPL advocate will say "well, that was an interesting waste of time: now where were we on trying to get everyone to use GPL?". You won't succeed in convincing them of anything: you are just wasting time.
Now, maybe, on the other side, I'd make some inroads with you by trying to argue that, in the long term, making things "too free for developers" actually comes around to "bite you in the ass" and that you end up in situations where, for example, all major mobile browsers are now effectively closed source in a world where everything is increasingly moving to mobile-only platforms, and that by having invested so strongly in WebCore (LGPL) instead of Gecko (GPL) we caused that reality by allowing WebKit (BSD) to exist... but this is going to be a really long and really painful argument that has nothing to do with Stallman hating on gcc, and it is not one I feel like I should have to spend my time today arguing. I honestly don't even think these arguments really get anywhere, and tend to just make everyone angry.
> "I have a right to own slaves" is a bad analogy, it doesn't mirror the kinds of trade offs we're discussing here. Slavery is not a case of balancing rights between two people, it is a case of one person's supposed right negating all rights in the other person. It's not very dissimilar from "I have the right to kill."
sigh As you seem to only be quoting the things I am saying in these immediate comment threads, without taking into account the expanded context I've now linked you to twice, I am going to have to consider this conversation a waste of time :/. The extent to which that exact analogy matters in the full argument I asked you to read is clearly "not much" (it was there, and is here, just an example of freedoms being relative; in the full argument I went into extreme detail on exactly how the freedoms here are subject), and yet you seem to only be responding to the teaser summary I laid out in this comment. I should not have to repeat that entire thread here: all I asked you to do was to read that discussion and come back, and I do not understand why that is so hard for you to do :(.
You seem unnaturally concerned with me understanding what Stalman is saying for how little you seem to be trying to understand what I am saying.
Im declining to continue as well, if you're going to throw around text walls full of straw men I see no value in continuing this conversation. Further the idea yield per word is very low in what you've writen here, so no I'm not going to go read your dissertations elsewhere.
Your strawmen so far in this thread:
"right to own slaves"
"value apple's cash balance as a social good"
Stalmans statement was about the good of gpl vs bsd, alternate rubrics are absolutely on topic.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6209724
As for your comments on the short vs. long term issues related to "#_advances_open_sourced", I think that is an interesting discussion to have at another time, as it is off-topic today: Stallman, as I have argued, does not care about attempts to maximize "value" in the way you have defined it, whether in the short or long term; instead, he has defined "value" as "freedom", and I imagine (or at least hope) that a future where mankind is living without all the fancy toys we have, but where the things we have we actually own ourselves, with nothing between us and modifying those things in the way we please would be a "win". All attempts to maximize the thing you care about are, to him, probably nothing more than a distraction. Again: that's not to discredit the things you care about; it is only to say that the goals themselves are mere opinions that people have, and that to understand others requires thinking in their terms.