Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 06:49:14 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Trevor Johnson <trevor@jpj.net> Cc: <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Stallman now claims authorship of Linux Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20010418064119.04710720@localhost> In-Reply-To: <20010418032018.S12981-100000@blues.jpj.net> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20010418003011.045ef3b0@localhost>
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At 02:16 AM 4/18/2001, Trevor Johnson wrote: >The only parts of the GPL I see that mention money are: > > You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, > and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange > for a fee. > >and > > [...]give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of > physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable > copy of the corresponding source code [...] > >Are you saying that hiring someone to make changes to a GPL'd program >would violate this second provision? If he or she attempted to license his modified version for money. And that's the point! Stallman does not want anyone to be able to make money by creating and selling software. He's fine with the notion of reducing creative people to the level of disk pressers.... This is exactly the sort of reduction in programmers' status he called for in his "GNU Manifesto." >I guess the FSF will have to run off donations when that happens. It should be running off of donations NOW. It's a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, which means that profits from sales are considered to be "unrelated business income." A 501(c)(3) must get at least half of its income from donations -- a requirement which the FSF itself claims that it has not met. (Its Web site says that more than half of its income comes from sales.) The IRS should yank its tax-exempt status. >> Gates' statement is carefully contrived propaganda that attempts >> to justify the actions of a monopolist. > >At first it seemed to me that he understood that a monopoly needs a >healthy host to feed off. On second thought, perhaps he has other ideas. There are many perspectives about just how much a monopoly can tighten the screws while avoiding government action. In today's political climate, it can turn them pretty tight. XP's "activation" feature is a good example of Microsoft putting the squeeze on consumers to get their personal information... and tying them to the company for upgrades and patches. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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