Re: Please explain the FSF copyright assignment thing

[Stefan Monnier]

>> http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-05-cisco-settlement.html
> Seems I just dislike the idea of enforced freedom

Enforced freedom? nobody there was obligated to benefit from freedom.
What was enforced was the obligation for Cisco to transfer to their
clients the freedom they decided to enjoy.

In my mind, the above is one of the clearest examples of the benefit of GPL.

Without this, I wouldn't have been able to use OpenWRT on my home router
for so many years (and other third party firmwares before that), and
I likely wouldn't use BananaPis for my home servers (made possible by the
obligation of Allwinner to distribute the source code of their port of
the Linux kernel).
[ Not sure what I'd use instead of BananaPis, all other alternatives
  seem to use up a lot more power or to lack the reliability of SATA.  ]


        Stefan