[ale] Open-source software license manager

[kafka at antichri.st (George Carless)]

On Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 01:26:03PM -0400, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-06-22 at 12:57 -0400, George Carless wrote:
> > Well, license management typically implies restrictions on use which are 
> > antithetical to the nature of free software, right?  
> 
> I think you are misguided.  "Free" has many facets.  Even the GPL, from
> certain angles, limits your "freedom". 

I'm not especially interested in getting into a terminology war, 
here, but I do think that it's pretty evident that license 
management software is at odds with virtually every facet of 
"freedom" that is out there: if the software is free only as in 
beer, why would license management be required?  If it's free as in 
free to modify etc., what use would such license management really 
be?  Perhaps you can provide an example of where you think license 
management *would* be both compatible (and sensible/necessary) with 
free software, for whatever reasonable definition of 'free' you 
like--because I can't think of one.

Regards,
--George

--------------------------------------
George Carless ... kafka at antichri.st
Words are just dust in deserts of sound