>a) "Tried and true" does not mean it will work forever. It's also bullshit to sell copies of non-scarce resources. Besides, you can sell Free software. Your argument is invalid.
While you technically can sell free software, you can't make much of a profit off of it in the current climate. Red Hat et al DO NOT make money off the software -- they make the money off incidentals like support and consulting. The software is a prerequisite, but if Linux went away, Red Hat could survive by switching its techs and consultant to whatever replaced it. People who make OSS do not make money off of their software directly.
This happens because Stallman believes that no creator should be granted a limited monopoly over the distribution of his product. This is a completely reasonable "freedom" to disavow; copyright has been around hundreds of years and is explicitly authorized in the US Constitution. You can easily argue that copyright has gone out of control, but the GPL essentially mandates removal of the profit-bearing portions of copyright by legally releasing your privilege to control distribution (and thus become the sole supplier).
Perhaps this would work better in a world where copyright didn't exist at all; then there'd be no exclusive right and the numbers wouldn't skew so deeply negative as compared to proprietary options.
Personally I fully believe computer users have a right to a readable copy of the code they expect to execute on their machines. I simply do not believe that there is a moral imperative that software vendors allow anyone and everyone to redistribute that package. If a vendor chooses to do this, that is fine and good, but I don't believe it's immoral to try to make some money developing complex software by restricting licensees and utilizing copyright law to a reasonable extent (i.e., as a limited monopoly on distribution intended to promote useful progress in science and the arts).
>I simply do not believe that there is a moral imperative that software
vendors allow anyone and everyone to redistribute that package.
The moral imperative here is not that they need to allow it - it's that
they can and should not be able to forbid it. You can't force someone to
share something, but neither can you stop others from doing so.
This is an argument against copyright. I think it's a rather extreme position. Copyright is useful as a concept even if it's gotten completely out of control.
The issue with the GPL is that it takes the most critical component of copyright away -- the ability to control the distribution of your work in any meaningful degree (e.g., by charging money for access to it). You can tinker with the copyright code to say that works transformed away from direct human readability (i.e. things that require a machine to be understood, like binary compiled code) are not copyrightable, requiring everyone to release source code, etc., but the premise of freedom 2 is neither self-evident or inviolable. In the real world, people have to make money, and without some form of intellectual property law, any digitized work immediately has an infinite supply, which will always usurp any level of demand no matter how significant, making it impossible to profit off of the digitized work directly.
I don't believe there's a moral requirement to allow everyone access to the fruits of your labor for free. If the software generates value for the end-user, it seems fair to expect some recompense for the work you've done. Why do you believe it is unfair to actually make money off the product you build? Do we see people giving grills away for free and attempting to make a living off of "selling support" for that grill?
While you technically can sell free software, you can't make much of a profit off of it in the current climate. Red Hat et al DO NOT make money off the software -- they make the money off incidentals like support and consulting. The software is a prerequisite, but if Linux went away, Red Hat could survive by switching its techs and consultant to whatever replaced it. People who make OSS do not make money off of their software directly.
This happens because Stallman believes that no creator should be granted a limited monopoly over the distribution of his product. This is a completely reasonable "freedom" to disavow; copyright has been around hundreds of years and is explicitly authorized in the US Constitution. You can easily argue that copyright has gone out of control, but the GPL essentially mandates removal of the profit-bearing portions of copyright by legally releasing your privilege to control distribution (and thus become the sole supplier).
Perhaps this would work better in a world where copyright didn't exist at all; then there'd be no exclusive right and the numbers wouldn't skew so deeply negative as compared to proprietary options.
Personally I fully believe computer users have a right to a readable copy of the code they expect to execute on their machines. I simply do not believe that there is a moral imperative that software vendors allow anyone and everyone to redistribute that package. If a vendor chooses to do this, that is fine and good, but I don't believe it's immoral to try to make some money developing complex software by restricting licensees and utilizing copyright law to a reasonable extent (i.e., as a limited monopoly on distribution intended to promote useful progress in science and the arts).