Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Dealing with blind hatred for the GPL

[Aaron Wolf]

On 02/27/2016 10:09 AM, Yui Hirasawa wrote:

> Many people who think that are anarchist who also think they should be
> allowed to kill.
> 

I don't think Anarchists say that people should be allowed to kill.
Unrelated to that, I think the vast majority of people who say GPL is
"viral" and "restrictive" are actually *not* Anarchists.

>> Mention practical advantages and they'll say "corporations don't touch
>> anything GPL".
> 
> Those people are simply wrong. Many companies use and contribute to GPL
> licensed software.
> 
>> Mention the dangers of proprietary software and they'll say it doesn't
>> matter if the program in question is practically better.
> 
> You won't convince these people to think that freedom is important. They
> only care about usability and sometimes about cost. It is a shame that
> some people think that malware can be better in any way.
> 
>> Mention existing famous GPL projects and they'll argue that some of them
>> didn't switch to GPLv3 (like Linux and Blender).
> 
> Most of those people don't even know the differences between GPLv2 and
> GPLv3 or why some changes vere made. They only know about GPLv3 being
> longer and reject it based on that. These are often people who use
> X11/Expat or BSD licenses just because they are short and easy to
> understand. They don't care about freedom. Making their own life easy is
> all that's important to them.
> 
>> Actually, mentioning the GPL at all will get you covered with insults
>> and accusations of zealotry.
> 
> It is always a bit funny when zealots call others that.
> 
>> Showing them articles from GNU.org doesn't work, and will only result in
>> ad hominem attacks against their author, Richard Stallman.
> 
> Very rarely do they bother to even read those articles.
> 
>> This reminds me of Two Minutes Hate from 1984.
>>
>> How to reason with those people? They tend to gang up and it's very hard
>> to get your point across when everybody is agreeing with one another on
>> how stupid and brainwashed you are!
> 
> You can't reason with people who only care about their own life and not
> about helping the humanity. I would recommend not going to the channels
> and talking about it publicly but trying to spot the less brainwashed
> individuals and talk to them in private and after you have gotten a few
> of them on your side you could possibly try to bring it up on the
> channel.
>