Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 05:11:18 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Anatoly Vorobey <mellon@pobox.com> Cc: "G. Adam Stanislav" <redprince@redprince.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why are people against GNU? WAS Re: 5.0 already? Message-ID: <20000514051118.M22405@physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <20000514023000.A16663@happy.checkpoint.com>; from mellon@pobox.com on Sun, May 14, 2000 at 02:30:00AM %2B0000 References: <391D71FE.1570F551@asme.org> <Pine.BSF.4.10.10005130735370.20100-100000@hydrant.intranova.net> <391D4DAD.FD80980A@picusnet.com> <003b01bfbcdc$6059fb40$a164aad0@kickme> <391D71FE.1570F551@asme.org> <20000513205610.A22103@physics.iisc.ernet.in> <3.0.6.32.20000513143506.00895650@mail85.pair.com> <20000514010614.A16058@happy.checkpoint.com> <3.0.6.32.20000513180213.00894400@mail85.pair.com> <20000514023000.A16663@happy.checkpoint.com>
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> > The > > "party" has full control over it. The "party" can even change the license > > in the future to whatever it wants, without the author having any say. > > This is not grounded in fact. If I release a piece of software under > GPL, you are *not* free to change the license; in fact, this lack of > freedom is what is so aggravating about GPL to BSD people in the first > place! What are you smoking? I think he's referring to the "copying" file distributed with many GPL software, saying that you may distribute it under the GPL version 2, or "at your discretion, any later version". That is a choice of the author, who apparently trusts the FSF not to make undesirable changes to the GPL, but it is not necessary. > > In a Stallmanistic society the programmer has the duty to write software > > because he has the ability to do so. He may expect nothing in return. > > That is not correct. However, it is correct that in Stallman's opinion, > you should not be free to restrict the use of something you released. > It is notable that Stallman is not trying to achieve that goal through > forcing you to do that; he's not lobbying for changing the copyright > law; he's trying to establish a body of software based on that principle. > I don't quite see what's so totalitarian and Stalinistic about that. > *You* are arguing that a programmer should be free to use whatever > license he wants, and Stallman does *exactly that*. This is what copyleft > is all about. And if you don't like his license, don't use his code. If intellectual property and copyright laws didn't exist, anyone could use his code and he wouldn't have bothered with creating the GPL. Since such laws do exist, he's using those laws to ensure that copying his work remains permitted. He has every right to do that, and you have no right to demand that he use a different license. Moreover, Stallman has never been against moneymaking -- from selling packaged copies of the software, custom-writing software, offering support services, whatever. The GNU project itself sells CDs at substantially higher prices than their bare production cost. R. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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