Joshua Allen nails it on the contraditons of the GPL and its prophets:
One cranky coder has taken exception to this particular argument in my "No Love for GPL" post, replying, "insuring that something you give as a gift to the community remains collective property is not organized crime." Pleasantly, this statement shows an understanding of GPL that is lacking in many OSS advocates. GPL philosophy is that intellectual property should be collective property. I don't believe that collectivism is criminal, or even wrong in all cases. But I think that collectivism is best used sparingly. Collectivism (the rejection of individual property rights) is the antithesis of freedom. When RMS champions a collectivist platform and cynically says it embodies "free as in freedom", it's not exactly the end of the world. Naive, pathetically retro, and cynical are adjectives that come to mind.
But I am concerned that so many otherwise bright developers fail to see the obvious incongruencies in GPL philosophy. Computer people are smart; we are supposed to be able to figure things out. So why is it that nobody is throwing a compiler error on a guy who says (collectivism == freedom)? Not only do they fail to see the typo in that statement, they even cut-and-paste the equation into every ZDNet forum they can find. The other major bug in GPL philosophy relates to my comments about transparency. GPL advocates often assert that ((IP == secretive) && (GPL == transparent)). This equation is only true in a very narrow scope that is mostly irrelevant (source code) to most developers, and is exactly opposite in most places where it matters. This flawed equation is basically the same as saying that ((capitalism == secretive) && (collectivism == transparent)). Asserting such is like saying that down is up and up is down - capitalism has produced some secretive and shady folks, but collectivism brought us Pol Pot and Josef Stalin. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that GPL is "a threat to mankind". I am simply pointing out that it should be self-evident that ((capitalism == transparent) && (collectivism == secretive)). When someone suggests that collectivism (GPL) is the way to encourge more transparency, while insinuating that capitalism (IP law) encourages secrecy, my mind suffers severe cognitive dissonance. I believe that most people are pretty intelligent, and have honorable intentions. So it is really difficult for me to understand how someone could truly believe that GPL promotes transparency. Initially, I rationalized the GPL as being a typical cute prank pulled by a clever social engineer (in the spirit of Church of Subgenius). But the fact that nobody has called the bluff for so many years leads me to believe that a whole lot of people are just plain duped, and have some very fundamental defects in their understanding of democracy and freedom. I am sure that GPL is not the cause of this deficiency, but rather a symptom. Our schools don't teach civics or logic anymore. And that isn't good for democracy.
9:11:43 PM 
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