I invite you to read and comment this article from Richard Stallman on the GNU Project, about freedom on software, and the history of computers. If you read it you will receive 10 NERD points

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html

"Users' control over the program requires four essential freedoms.

(0) The freedom to run the program as you wish, for whatever purpose.

(1) The freedom to study the program's “source code,” and change it, so the program does your computing as you wish. Programs are written by programmers in a programming language—like English combined with algebra—and that form of the program is the “source code.” Anyone who knows programming, and has the program in source code form, can read the source code, understand its functioning, and change it too. When all you get is the executable form, a series of numbers that are efficient for the computer to run but extremely hard for a human being to understand, understanding and changing the program in that form are forbiddingly hard.

(2) The freedom to make and distribute exact copies when you wish. (It is not an obligation; doing this is your choice. If the program is free, that doesn't mean someone has an obligation to offer you a copy, or that you have an obligation to offer him a copy. Distributing a program to users without freedom mistreats them; however, choosing not to distribute the program—using it privately—does not mistreat anyone.)

(3) The freedom to make and distribute copies of your modified versions, when you wish."
Extract from https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html

 

Just say Gnu or FSF, by mentioning RMS you open a can of worms the size of Mars.

I've released and contributed to open and free software, under various licenses, and trust me... it isn't as straightforward as people assume. Things like Qt, JUCE, and VST3 SDK are GPL3, but you wouldn't say they're exactly "free". All GNU projects are basically copyrighted (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes questionable) to FSF.

It's going to be a massive nerd fight just tangentially talking about licensing. Release a project publicly and it's almost a cosmic law that within a week you will get a question about your choice of OS support, your choice of programming language and used libraries, and of course, how dare you pick license XYZ version 666.

 

There are info about why FSF decides to license the copyright for them https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/FSF-copyright-handling
as to defeat in court the freedom of this GNU licensed software against private interest, between many other reasons in the article.

Copyright is a very complex material, very dense, and with multiple angles. My intention is not to open a can of worms, just to debate about private software distribution, as we are in a forum of warez. Not about GNU specifically, more in general about the use of warez, based on the asumption of free private copy.