I dunno about the letter. I use the GPL v2 for most of my work and Stallman is a major reason I am opposed to moving to the GPL v3 (that and the license is long enough to be difficult to understand, while the GPL v2's difficulties come from simplicity).
Part of the thing though is that I am not convinced the GPL has the reach that Stallman likes to pretend it does. At least in the US (and presumably even fruits-of-labor countries) copyright is not supposed to be a way to monopolize secondary markets for practical tools. See the concurrance in Lexmark v. Static Control and also the opinion of the court in Sony v. Connectix. Note that no court in the US has ever allowed secondary markets for practical tools to be controlled through copyright of a work in the primary market, and I am not aware of any country which has held otherwise.
In general, copyright is supposed to protect artistic contributions, and protect and author from having his/her work distributed without compensation. How that work is used in a practical way (i.e. other than as a work of art) is beyond the scope of copyright law at least in the US, and presumably in other places as well. Indeed, steps required to use a piece of software, even where it involves literal copying and even distribution of literal copies, have been held to be fair use under 17 USC 102(b). See Sony v. Connectix, Lexmark v. Static Control, and Oracle v. Google.
So I think that copyright only gets you so far. The sort of control that Stallman wants to see the GPL have can only be possible through software patents and we know how he feels about that topic. The GPL cannot reach cases where interoperability is sought and where the original work is not distributed. Anything else is wishful thinking.
So I don't see the GPL as any great menace, but a lot of that is because I don't think it reaches as far as Stallman likes to think (or at least pretend) that it does.
IANAL, TINLA, and if you are looking for legal advice here you are a fool for trying to get it on HN ;-)
Part of the thing though is that I am not convinced the GPL has the reach that Stallman likes to pretend it does. At least in the US (and presumably even fruits-of-labor countries) copyright is not supposed to be a way to monopolize secondary markets for practical tools. See the concurrance in Lexmark v. Static Control and also the opinion of the court in Sony v. Connectix. Note that no court in the US has ever allowed secondary markets for practical tools to be controlled through copyright of a work in the primary market, and I am not aware of any country which has held otherwise.
In general, copyright is supposed to protect artistic contributions, and protect and author from having his/her work distributed without compensation. How that work is used in a practical way (i.e. other than as a work of art) is beyond the scope of copyright law at least in the US, and presumably in other places as well. Indeed, steps required to use a piece of software, even where it involves literal copying and even distribution of literal copies, have been held to be fair use under 17 USC 102(b). See Sony v. Connectix, Lexmark v. Static Control, and Oracle v. Google.
So I think that copyright only gets you so far. The sort of control that Stallman wants to see the GPL have can only be possible through software patents and we know how he feels about that topic. The GPL cannot reach cases where interoperability is sought and where the original work is not distributed. Anything else is wishful thinking.
So I don't see the GPL as any great menace, but a lot of that is because I don't think it reaches as far as Stallman likes to think (or at least pretend) that it does.
IANAL, TINLA, and if you are looking for legal advice here you are a fool for trying to get it on HN ;-)