Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 04:24:38 +0000 From: Anatoly Vorobey <mellon@pobox.com> To: adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why are people against GNU? WAS Re: 5.0 already? Message-ID: <20000514042438.A19230@happy.checkpoint.com> In-Reply-To: <200005140109.SAA17203@sharmas.dhs.org>; from adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org on Sat, May 13, 2000 at 06:09:34PM -0700 References: <20000513215350.A6803@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0005131247090.48183-100000@sasami.jurai.net> <20000514011612.B16058@happy.checkpoint.com> <200005140109.SAA17203@sharmas.dhs.org>
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On Sat, May 13, 2000 at 06:09:34PM -0700, Arun Sharma wrote: > > Of course, there's an easy way for you to prove me wrong. Please point > > out to me a GNU replacement of sendmail, perl, or bind. These are > > (some of) large free software projects that *were* available for free use > > in source form. Surely the GNU people must've rewritten them all to > > release them under the GPL? > > I entered into the UNIX world in early 90s, so I don't know what happened > at the early stages of the GNU project. > > But certainly, there have been many attempts of GNU-fication of > existing code on the grounds that it was non-free. Gnome, GPG and Linux > to name a few. Well, yes, of course. The whole GNU project started because existing code (UNIX) was non-free. Noone would argue with that. The point I debated was that much of GNU code was created to counter code which was *free*, *but* non-GNU. I explained why this doesn't apply to things like fileutils, and to just about any old-time GNU code. Now take your example: Gnome was started (apart from other reasons) because the Qt license was decidedly non-free for commercial use. I.e. it wasn't just non-GNU, it wouldn't qualify for inclusion into FreeBSD as well. GPG was started because of similar potential problems with pgp. Linux was started because there weren't any free UNIX kernels for i386 architecture. > Also, having GNU code around hasn't stopped duplication of work. Try > counting the number of GPL'ed mail clients on http://freshmeat.net/ Well, what's so bad about that? -- Anatoly Vorobey, mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/ "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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