From owner-freebsd-chat Mon Aug 21 12:15: 5 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from lariat.org (lariat.org [12.23.109.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 90B3037B7AE for ; Mon, 21 Aug 2000 12:15:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mustang.lariat.org (IDENT:ppp0.lariat.org@lariat.org [12.23.109.2]) by lariat.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA23396; Mon, 21 Aug 2000 13:13:30 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20000821130958.05baccd0@localhost> X-Sender: brett@localhost X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 13:13:24 -0600 To: j mckitrick From: Brett Glass Subject: Re: Gimme FreeBSD anyday! Cc: The Clark Family , David Kelly , narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee, brooks@one-eyed-alien.net, chat@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <20000821182156.A17647@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20000821110604.04ba5920@localhost> <200008151718.e7FHIbb13082@mail.hiwaay.net> <20000821144137.D13975@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <4.3.2.7.2.20000821110604.04ba5920@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org At 11:21 AM 8/21/2000, j mckitrick wrote: >i've heard that there are companies that are contracted to make improvements >to GCC and other GPL tools and then are allowed to release the changes as >open source. "Allowed?" They MUST; the licensing won't let them release them any other way. The result, alas, is at best that they are on the work-for-hire treadmill and can never build a product base which will allow them to avoid living hand to mouth. Stallman says, in The GNU Manifesto, that this is one of the goals of the GPL: to reduce programmers to the level of grunts. >besides, there is no way of proving a given binary was based on a particular >source code anyway, especially if it has been rearranged, right? If the binary shares bugs or quirks with known source code, it is likely that it was derived from it. This is often used to support a claim of copyright infringement in court and to justify subpoenas of source code. --Brett Glass To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message