You exist. You can make choices. You can act. In that sense, you are free, until you're dead. You can do whatever you want with software.
In a more practical sense, if you want to redistribute GPL-licensed software, you aren't free from the restriction of the software's license in a legal sense, because the license is your only legal means to redistribute the software.
When are you ever free to do what you wish with software? Answer, when it's your original work... and you don't violate software patents, even the ones you never heard of... and it's not export controlled or you're not exporting it... and its main purpose is not to induce copyright infringement (we are losing that one in the courts today, sad but true)... and you are not using the software to commit other crimes... AND SO ON.
Get real, there are all kinds of legal restrictions on your ability to "do what you wish" with software, even public domain software. Some of them even make sense.
It might be more accurate to call it "freed" software. The goal of the GPL is to uncage domesticated software and let it roam wild forever, never collared again. The people who distribute software in this fashion won't let you put it back in the zoo.
And again, FSF is not saying that users are free to do what they want. You are not free, according to them. They say that software is free, in the sense of the software freedoms. That sentence essentially would only parse to $0 before Stallman came along.
You exist. You can make choices. You can act. In that sense, you are free, until you're dead. You can do whatever you want with software.
In a more practical sense, if you want to redistribute GPL-licensed software, you aren't free from the restriction of the software's license in a legal sense, because the license is your only legal means to redistribute the software.
When are you ever free to do what you wish with software? Answer, when it's your original work... and you don't violate software patents, even the ones you never heard of... and it's not export controlled or you're not exporting it... and its main purpose is not to induce copyright infringement (we are losing that one in the courts today, sad but true)... and you are not using the software to commit other crimes... AND SO ON.
Get real, there are all kinds of legal restrictions on your ability to "do what you wish" with software, even public domain software. Some of them even make sense.
It might be more accurate to call it "freed" software. The goal of the GPL is to uncage domesticated software and let it roam wild forever, never collared again. The people who distribute software in this fashion won't let you put it back in the zoo.
And again, FSF is not saying that users are free to do what they want. You are not free, according to them. They say that software is free, in the sense of the software freedoms. That sentence essentially would only parse to $0 before Stallman came along.