Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 17:53:13 +0200 From: Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org> To: Nitebirdz <nitebirdz@uswest.net> Cc: David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com>, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSD Advocacy... Message-ID: <20000613175313.A3973@mithrandr.moria.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0006131018390.5975-100000@coimbra.oss.uswest.net>; from nitebirdz@uswest.net on Tue, Jun 13, 2000 at 10:25:56AM -0500 References: <394525C6.F3C84C5@acuson.com> <Pine.LNX.4.21.0006131018390.5975-100000@coimbra.oss.uswest.net>
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On Tue 2000-06-13 (10:25), Nitebirdz wrote: > Difficult to counter. I agree with the view. The BSD does not protect > the community from witnessing a major corporatin virtually hijacking the > code. As a matter of fact, nothing stops Microsoft from doing precisely > that. I know, I know, some people say that the day that happens we will > have won. Wrong. The day that happens, Microsoft will have a kick ass > stable, reliable and efficient operating system that they can change to > their own pleasure without giving back to the community they took it from. If you write something under BSD license, anyone can benefit from it. If you write something under GPL license, only people who use GPL products can benefit from it. If Microsoft uses the code, then all the users of Microsoft products benefit from it. That's great. Also, Microsoft will have used tried and tested code, and needn't have, possibly incorrectly, reinvented the wheel. They can concentrate on other matters, like GUI design and dynamics, or whatever they do. They're going to mess with standards whether they implement it, or if other people implement it. > Agree that is simply stupid. I mean the "would you please release your > software under the GPL so that I can use it?" request, because the one > where you say that "the GPL prevents people from stealing the code" is > totally true... at least as far as these licenses are legally enforceable. The GPL prevents people from using your code in anything but GPL products. That's it's aim. It's up to you to decide if this is an advantage or a disadvantage. > For example, a given company may be interested in building some > customized version of FreeBSD for their own purposes that they can > sell under their own terms. That is simply not possible with the GPL > license. Perhaps that is where the BSD advocates should center their > attention. The advantage of the BSD license is simply that anyone can use it for any purpose, with the proviso that the author is exempt from any legal repercussions of releasing the code. (ie, they can't blame the author if the program does something weird.) Also, it doesn't make sense for companies to release certain types of code under GPL. Extensions to that code are not available to the company under any license but GPL, and thus they can't reimplement them into their closed non-GPL system. I believe that's what the MPL/NPL was created. Reply-To set to myself, since I'd prefer not to have yet another license war. Neil -- Neil Blakey-Milner Sunesi Clinical Systems nbm@mithrandr.moria.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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