Date: 20 Dec 2001 13:30:25 -0800 From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Jeremy Karlson <karlj000@unbc.ca> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: GPL nonsense: time to stop Message-ID: <ppr8ppwpe6.8pp@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0112200149520.29122-100000@ugrad.unbc.ca> References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0112200149520.29122-100000@ugrad.unbc.ca>
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Jeremy Karlson <karlj000@unbc.ca> writes: > a better one. What I was getting at is that even if Stallman were to > change the license on his "free software," users would always have the > ability to grab an older version and fork development at that point. Yes, of course. I just jumped on the thing about the "point" of the GPL because I had just been thinking about the real point of the GPL being to cause people to "close" their source to closed-source developers and I got confused about what you said the point was. Sorry. > Agreed. Even the fact that he claims something that "doesn't give you > as many rights as the GPL" as being prorietary is not very good. Does > that mean that the BSDL is also not proprietary, because it actually > gives you more rights? I don't think they would agree. I think they would agree that the BSDL is not "proprietary" and that it is "free software". But they are quick to note that derivatives are likely to be neither. But, again, all of this software is proprietary, in that it is owned and used under license, and all of it is free software, in that there are no licensing fees. > PS - I've seen that "Open Sources" book around a few times, and I thought > it might be an interesting read, but I've always thought it's probably > pretty Linux and GPL preachy. Is it actually worth my time to read? How can I know? The amount of Linux stuff is quite low, excepting a chapter by Torvalds and the full (?) text of the famous early Torvalds-Tannembaum (sp?) e-debate. It's mostly histories (personal and projects), with a big dose of preaching about Free Software and Copyleft and Open Source philosophy. But there's several chapters by agnostics too. One by Kirk McKusic. But like other religious texts, you risk a kind of brain-washing experience from the repetition of a few ideas. There's plenty of history on the WWW, which might a better alternative unless you can find it in the dirt-cheap bin, like I did. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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