> All software and copyright licenses are ideological documents. You don't see the ideology in BSD and MIT because it is your preferred ideology.
Please read what I wrote more carefully. The phrase "in a way that the BSD and MIT licenses are not" is doing important work, namely implying that there is a way in which MIT/BSD are ideological.
Perhaps ideological came off as an aspersion? I certainly didn't mean it as one. It's just an observation, and frankly a pretty obvious one. I'm quite sympathetic to the Free Software movement and, at least in the first order, would be happy to live in a world where all software is copyleft.
BSD/MIT is essentially reverting to the natural conditions that would obtain without statutory copyright. GPL on the other hand is actively attempting to motivate sharing and respect for user freedom in a way that is far beyond the natural state of affairs. Thus it's fairly described as ideological in a way that the former licenses are not.
I think GP's reading of what you wrote is an entirely reasonable reading. Their interpretation was the same as mine before reading your follow-up. It did seem like you were saying that the GPL has ideology but BSD and MIT do not.
It would have been much clearer if you had simply said something like, "The ideology behind the GPL is very different from that of the BSD or MIT licenses".
I read what you wrote and I came to the same conclusion as GP. What's wrong with simply saying "BSD/MIT has a different ideology to the GPL"?
Is that what you mean to say? If it is, why say this (which means something else):
> BSD/MIT is essentially reverting to the natural conditions that would obtain without statutory copyright. GPL on the other hand is actively attempting to motivate sharing and respect for user freedom in a way that is far beyond the natural state of affairs. Thus it's fairly described as ideological in a way that the former licenses are not.
I think you're still trying to portray one more positively than the other; you're writing a lot of words to claim "I'm not really saying that" while actually saying that.
