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Discussion on: GNU Public License is all but free and you should never use it

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Ben Halpern

Yeah, it certainly took these specific efforts to get to where we are now, but open source is fundamentally valuable enough that I think that progress could have happened under other circumstances. We only get one timeline, it's literally impossible to know.

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Jason C. McDonald

Indeed!

While we're talking about theoretical history, by some interpretations, it may have been easier for open source to gain a footing without the FSF, simply because it took years of hard work to peel the "viral and divisive" label off the open source movement. It wasn't until relatively recent years that the OSI managed it, and larger companies started seeing the value in open source.

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Ben Halpern • Edited

In that same vein, peer-to-peer technology might be a lot further along if its primary and/or famous use cases weren't immediately so anti-establishment.