In the beginning there was PUBLIC DOMAIN, and it was good. Nothing communist about that, just natural freedom. People own their minds and sensory organs, and if they hear someone tell an interesting story (or whatever), it is their Right to tell that story to someone else (unless of course they've signed an explicit contract, which usually isn't the case). Computers eventually brought the cost and effort in copying and spreading information to pretty much zero. Public domain / uncopyrighted / permissively licensed / [**copyfree**](http://copyfree.org/standard/licenses) software has existed in computer clubs all over the world since the 1960s! Then came COPYRIGHT - artificial scarcity backed by government force. Some very smart people (ex. Ayn Rand) [make arguments in favor of it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_perspectives_on_intellectual_property), and some very smart people (ex. [Stephan Kinsella](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_Kinsella)) make arguments against it, but I value my independence above all else. I want to be able to secede from any nation or planet, much less any corporate entanglement, any time I so choose! And thus I just simply avoid proprietary software - it's easy enough, and getting easier every year. But then came COPYLEFT - a ridiculous automagical contract posing as """free software""". It had only slowed down the spread of open source software, and made many open source software products not actually free (as in freedom). It was a social experiment to get programmers entangled with restrictive viral commie contracts, and then to make those contracts ever-more restrictive. The success of permissive licenses and Linux refusing to move up to GPLv3 is the only reason we don't have GPLv9 by now, with all sorts of SJW restrictions and bans on anyone to the right of Karl Marx... See also: [Yet another FUCK RICHARD STALLMAN rant, because that communist hijacker still isn't getting as much hate as it deserves! ](https://archive.is/pbHSK)