Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 19:34:47 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: Licia <licia@o-o.org>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: reviewers for a free software license Message-ID: <62287.919740887@zippy.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 22 Feb 1999 19:36:58 MST." <4.1.19990222193349.03fc1ba0@mail.lariat.org>
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> Can you write a <100-word license that does all of these things and > is also incompatible with the GPL? After recent exchanges in several Bleah, I thought I'd already made it clear that such is not my aim. I'm not looking for a poison pill, I'm looking for a simple license that anyone can use. The GPL as a collection of bits describing a licensing methodology is essentially irrelevant, when you actually stop to think about it, since it's only when people USE the GPL that the issues described therein actually become pertinent. If you want to have people stop using the GPL then it will be because you have a BETTER license that is more ATTRACTIVE than the GPL, not because you set out poisoned traps to eliminate any GPL people who might wander in your direction. To put it another way, it is precisely the GPL's higher degree of attractiveness when compared to other commercial shrink-wrap licenses that leads people to apply it to their code. Most young and idealistic programmers just starting out in the free software biz cast around for a license to use and generally pick the GPL simply because it happens to be rather prominently stuck onto EMACS or GCC or some other piece of software they're familiar with. They don't read it all that carefully and I was one of those young and idealistic programmers MYSELF just 20 years ago, slapping the GPL on things because it seemed righteous and in strong opposition to the forces of proprietary evil. Later in life, I learned to see more subtle forms of coercion for what they were and gravitated towards the public domain, which seemed the most ethical of all software licenses. Unfortunately, PD doesn't disclaim liability or handle a number of other things which are reasonably important and so I moved on in turn to the BSD / X Consortium style licenses, both of which have been very successful *just as they are* but are unfortunately also not as well known. The problem of the BSD license vs the GPL is much the same as the problem of FreeBSD vs Linux. In many arguable ways it's a superior way to go, but it's also poorly "marketed" and that's the greatest area of weakness to be addressed, not the fundamental technology or the wording of the licenses. They are just fine the way they are and comprise our greatest asset in winning people over, not through force but through simply being BETTER. The minute you try and "prevent" anything, you've lost the moral high ground and you're right down there with RMS, trying to use the license agreement as a mechanism for advancing a specific, limited agenda rather than a much larger, omnidirectional one. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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