Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 04:09:39 +0530 (IST) From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: jef53313@bayou.uh.edu Cc: Laurence Berland <stuyman@confusion.net>, 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: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9905030346550.7672-100000@theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9905021638490.97829-100000@fosburgh.dyndns.org>
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I agree that this is a pointless discussion on this list. But most discussions on this list seem pointless wrt the title "freebsd-advocacy". So let me go on a bit longer. > Actually, no, and I am a laissez-faire capitalist. If you go to > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html and read what is on the page it > says quite clearly (at least to me) that the FSF does not believe in the > concept of software as intellectual property nor does it believe in the > ownership of software. Furthermore, http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html, > Stallman (and yes, as near as I can tell all of this is the official policy > of FSF) states he believes he has to share his software. He further goes on > to state that programmers should be *punished* if they choose not tp make > their software free. There is an entire section where he goes on to state > that placing controls on your own ideas really controls other people's > lives. You are confusing the GPL with the GNU manifesto. The GPL talks a lot about how software should be free and its freedom should be protected, but makes only a passing reference to patents in its preamble. It does not talk about intellectual property. It is perfectly possible to disagree with Stallman's agenda but agree with him on the suitability of the GPL for free software. Linus Torvalds, the KDE project members, etc are not particular sympathizers of Stallman's more extreme views (the KDE page at one time had nasty anti-RMS links which they quickly toned down) but they all think the GPL is best for their purposes. Which is to write free code and make sure it's not hijacked by rich corporations, as much of X has been. To get back to my original thread: FreeBSD is terrific on its own merits, and deserves to be promoted (perhaps not among clueless newbies, but certainly among relative clueful ones). But what's visible outside is not the merits but the political arguments, which are often uninformed and just silly, like this Daemon News article (to see some reactions to that, check out http://linuxtoday.com/stories/5542_flat.html ) Such half-baked rabble-rousing articles will not help anybody. Stallman isn't as clueless as some people may think. The GPL doesn't reflect his full agenda for very good reasons: he *wanted* people to use it. The LGPL is even less representative of his views but he introduced that because he knew it would help free software in the long run. Note that while many people have suggested forcing Microsoft to open up their source code, Stallman is *not* one of them (though he'd certainly like to see it happen). His suggestions for remedies if Microsoft loses are the most rational and well-reasoned I've yet seen. (http://linuxtoday.com/stories/4999.html) He understands the real world very well, though he often finds it convenient to pretend he doesn't. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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