Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 02:55:14 -0400 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: <20000514025513.C57423@sasami.jurai.net> In-Reply-To: <200005140320.UAA17469@sharmas.dhs.org>; from adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org on Sat, May 13, 2000 at 08:20:00PM -0700 References: <20000513215350.A6803@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <4.3.1.2.20000513104752.0447aa50@localhost> <20000514012024.A16224@happy.checkpoint.com> <4.3.1.2.20000513191658.0451dbb0@localhost> <20000514042602.A19316@happy.checkpoint.com> <4.3.1.2.20000513193601.0406a500@localhost> <20000514074433.A23997@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <200005140255.TAA17321@sharmas.dhs.org> <20000514083128.A24281@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <200005140320.UAA17469@sharmas.dhs.org>
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You, Arun Sharma, were spotted writing this on Sat, May 13, 2000 at 08:20:00PM -0700: > Swinging the fist to hit the nose is a crime. Selling software is > not. People made assault a crime because if it is permitted, a society > can not live together peacefully. The world is full of examples of > societies where selling software is permitted, without disturbing the > peace and prosperity of the society. > > I believe that selling software is not a crime. Stallman thinks it should > be. That's the problem. No, Stallman believes that selling software should not be helped by law by proclaiming software to be property. If something is not encouraged by law it is not necessarily a crime. Stallman has not, in my experience, shown any willingness to forcibly prevent people from trading GPL software, or any software, even in his ideal world. > The argument that extremists are necessary for the open source idea to be > noticed, is an interesting one. I'm not quite convinced that that's > the best way to make open source popular. The sword cuts both ways. Many open source people, such as esr, think Stallman is a nuisance because of his radicalism. They think he scares away business customers. They probably have a point. The popular sentiment in the linux world, however, is with Stallman rather than Raymond, however much Raymond tries to present it otherwise. You see it all the time with their talk about how GPL "protects" them. The simplest testcase is a hypothetical scenario when a commercial entity X takes the software, changes the source, releases it commercially without source. Reaction: BSD people - "glad we could be of use, and you might find it in your interests to give back your code to be maintained by the community"; Linux people - "you stole our code! you filthy whores! give us back our code!" ;) The latter sentiment is what dominates the endless ruminations on slashdot and the like about how GPL protects us from the evil domination of Microsoft. So many, many people appear to be convinced by Stallman without having been brainwashed. Of course, they are all wrong ;) -- 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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