From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Oct 29 14:23:16 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5DB1116A4CE for ; Fri, 29 Oct 2004 14:23:16 +0000 (GMT) Received: from imo-m27.mx.aol.com (imo-m27.mx.aol.com [64.12.137.8]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BC4B743D2F for ; Fri, 29 Oct 2004 14:23:13 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from TM4525@aol.com) Received: from TM4525@aol.com by imo-m27.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v37_r3.8.) id o.13c.4dfe782 (25305); Fri, 29 Oct 2004 10:22:57 -0400 (EDT) From: TM4525@aol.com Message-ID: <13c.4dfe782.2eb3ac41@aol.com> Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 10:22:57 EDT To: davids@webmaster.com MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: 9.0 for Windows sub 5114 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.1 cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: GPL vs BSD Licence X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 14:23:16 -0000 In a message dated 10/28/04 9:16:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time, davids@webmaster.com writes: > But then, I'm not sure (and I mean it) if there can be any piece of > software which, if designed for e.g. Linux, can be written w/o using any > system headers, libraries or whatsoever. ------------------ I find it impossible for any reasonable person to believe that, by making its header files available an O/S vendor therefore owns the rights to anything that runs on, or interoperates with the O/S. So Microsoft owns Photoshop. And Netscape too. So why are they fighting? Its been fairly well established that Lawyers know a lot about law but not much about computing. You can't apply copyright law verbatim to an operating system, because unlike a written work, the operating systems entire purpose is to provide hooks for external applications and device drivers. Claiming that anything that works with it is a "derivative" is, quite simply, ridiculous. The GPL is a myth. It will never be tested because if it is, it will lose all of its teeth. Its much more useful in a speculative state.