The other day Gruber once again linked to a good article. The author, Daniel Jalkut, described his opinion on the effects of using the GPL as an OSS license. The post can be pretty well summed up with this quote:
I suggest that the GPL does more to harm collaborative development
than it does to help it. - Daniel Jalkut
Today Gruber posted a follow up from Matt Mullenweg that argues the exact opposite, that Wordpress is successful not in spite of, but because of the GPL.
Towards the bottom of Matt's post he goes off on a tangent about how the GPL protects the rights (as in constitution) of 'users'. He even links to the Declaration of Independence article at Wikipedia. It'd be heart warming if it weren't such a fallacy. The core of his argument:
You are free to do pretty much whatever you want as long as it does not
infringe on the freedoms of others. - Matt Mullenweg
The only way a user has rights to the derivative work is if those rights are somehow propagated from original to derivative which is exactly why the GPL exists. Welcome to the beginning, Alice.
Lets rephrase the argument: "The GPL is good because it protects users' rights which only exist because of the GPL." Recursive FTW!
The GPL exists and is used as a tool to further the political and philosophical agendas of those who choose to use it. This is not a bad thing. As a developer you are free to do as you choose with your code. As a user I must decide if I'm willing to abide by your license just as I must choose to obey a closed source license. But for fuck's sake, don't pretend you're any different than a closed source licensor. Your onerous requirements annoy the shit out of me just as much as anyone else's.