On Sat, 26 Aug 2017 06:30:12 +0200 Moritz Bartl moritz@headstrong.de wrote:
choices. For instance, a small country might want to take advantage of further improvements by others to its software and would be more inclined to fund open source projects with licenses that limit commercial utilization, such as the General Public License.
This argument needs to be killed once and for all. As long as it is used by the enemies of freedom, it will be believed and taken into account as a problem by institutions.
I don't know of a really good answer already formulated to dispel this fallacy though, do you?
I would look at reformulating "commercial utilization" as what it is: vendor-locking and anti-competitive behavior. The GPL limits vendor-locking, and favors competition by providing an even playground for all industrial actors regardless of their size and capacity to produce code; considering public code as infrastructure, like language. Nobody would argue that limiting access to language is a genuine business practice (although promoters of 'intellectual property' would certainly disagree.)
== hk