Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 20:38:07 -0400 From: Christopher Masto <chris@netmonger.net> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Producing non-GPLed tools for FreeBSD Message-ID: <19981020203807.E16673@netmonger.net> In-Reply-To: <199810201921.MAA00548@dingo.cdrom.com>; from Mike Smith on Tue, Oct 20, 1998 at 12:21:41PM -0700 References: <19981020102029.A14879@netmonger.net> <199810201921.MAA00548@dingo.cdrom.com>
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On Tue, Oct 20, 1998 at 12:21:41PM -0700, Mike Smith wrote: > The hypocrisy comes from misleadingly calling this "free". If it were > truly free, Brett could do what he liked with it. In point of fact, > GPL'ed code is no more "free" than proprietary code. I won't argue it further, but I don't think it's so wrong or misleading to use "free" to mean "comes with the freedom to inspect, modify, and redistribute". You're not free to take away that freedom, but you're not free to use BSD code without passing on its COPYRIGHT notice either. They're two different, but valid types of freedom. I think GPL'd code is certainly more "free" than proprietary code: GCC code comes with the freedoms mentioned above, whereas Visual C++ does not. Anyway, this isn't really germane to hackers, although I will reiterate my previous suggestion that effort would be better spent, say, fixing NFS, than to rewrite the build toolchain. -- Christopher Masto Director of Operations S NetMonger Communications chris@netmonger.net info@netmonger.net SSS http://www.netmonger.net \_/ I don't think that the world needs another market dominated by Microsoft. I have enormous respect for the company, but I really get nervous about markets where one vendor has such power. - GEOFFREY MOORE, Marketing Guru To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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