Date: Sun, 02 May 1999 15:23:27 -0400 From: Laurence Berland <stuyman@confusion.net> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl>, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG, Kris Kennaway <kkennawa@physics.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: Some thoughts on advocacy (was: Slashdot ftp.cdrom.com upgra Message-ID: <372CA62F.B843DCEF@confusion.net> References: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9905030021220.7536-100000@theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in>
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>
>
> That is exactly the goal of the GPL.
> To put it another way, the BSD licence may give more freedom to
> the next programmer; but then, users all the way down the line
> below that can lose their freedom. The GPL's aim is to prevent
> that.
Ok, but that's not what you said before. Overgeneralization is bad.
>
>
> > On a side note, lets try and convince the authors of some GPL software we use
> > to rerelease it under the BSD license. How can they do that? There is one
> > group that can make a non-GPL version of GPL software, that group being the
> > copyright holder. They can break their own license, and the only one who could
> > sue them would be themselves. :)
>
> Practical point: unless it's written by one or very few people, you'll
> never succeed. Most of the interesting and well-established
> programs contain contributions from 100s of people and they'll
> all have to agree to change the licence. That apart, I think the
> idea sucks anyway...
I don't think the idea necessarily sucks, the system does use some GNU stuff, and it
wouldnt hurt FreeBSD if we could get more BSDL and less GPL, if nothing else but for
consistency. Besides, it wouldnt require hundreds of people. I don't have to ask
anyone who worked on it, all I need to ask is the copyright holder. Alot of people
who work on an open source project don't copyright their portions, they give it to
the project, which then copyrights it.
--
Laurence Berland, Stuyvesant HS Debate
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Windows 98: n.
useless extension to a minor patch release for
32-bit extensions and a graphical shell for a
16-bit patch to an 8-bit operating system
originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor,
written by a 2-bit company that can't stand for
1 bit of competition.
http://stuy.debate.net
icq #7434346 aol imer E1101
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