

Fair enough that’s an argument I hadn’t heard. I must admit “Free but you must keep it free” not being free enough for you strikes me as such a dumb argument I can’t fathom it being made in good faith but fair enough I guess.
Now I will say your comment about durable intellectual property ownership is interesting philosophically but I also don’t agree. No one “owns” GPL code. It’s public for everyone and anyone can fork it or whatever. GPL doesn’t give the original owner any power over others it just requires the code which was born free to stay free.


Keep it GPL is just keep it free as all it does is maintain further downstream projects also stay free.
Now I guess your comment about enforcement is true that the original licenser has the power to enforce their license. I guess that will make the coming decades interesting as the original licensers of these projects die. Surely when Linux finally kicks the bucket people don’t immediately get free rein to violate Linux’s GPL? Regardless I still don’t see how that gives the owner any power over you besides enforcing you keep it free. You can still do whatever you want with the code.