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Date:      Wed, 13 Jun 2001 10:26:38 +0200
From:      Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
To:        Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
Cc:        "Joseph A. Mallett" <jmallett@xMach.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Evan Leibovitch on BSD
Message-ID:  <20010613102638.C57154@lpt.ens.fr>
In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010612164541.00c43ad0@localhost>; from brett@lariat.org on Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 04:54:05PM -0600
References:  <4.3.2.7.2.20010612123127.045a6690@localhost> <Pine.BSO.4.33.0106121816470.8578-100000@Aphex.NewGold.NET> <4.3.2.7.2.20010612164541.00c43ad0@localhost>

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Brett Glass said on Jun 12, 2001 at 16:54:05:
> the subject of an acquisition that was quite lucrative for its owners) 
> and that "the supposedly "business hostile" GPL is attracting all kinds 
> and sizes of companies who have done their legal and business-model homework." 
> (Never mind that they're pretty much all going under, as Eazel has.)

I don't think he was talking about Eazel.  More like Sun, HP, IBM.
(Sun has been involved with GPL software, namely XEmacs, since long
before linux became a buzzword.)

> He also cannot so much as fathom the notion that the GPL might be
> unethical -- despite the explicit statements of Richard Stallman,
> the author of the GPL, that it was intended to hurt programmers and
> to "punish" small software developers (in particular, the spinoffs
> from the MIT AI Lab).

You keep saying this, but never give a quote to corroborate it.  You
name his GNU Manifesto, but that doesn't say its intentions are
anything like this.  You talk about Steven Levy's book, but quite
apart from the fact that Levy is not Stallman, I didn't get a negative
impression of RMS from that book at all.  In his afterword (1993, I
think) he sounds quite admiring of Stallman.

> Evan's e-mail address is "evan@starnix.com". 

Thanks.  I just sent him the following:

  Dear Evan,

  There's a bit of discussion going on about your recent ZDNet article
  on the freebsd-chat mailing list; while I have nothing useful to say
  about the article, I just wanted to say that Brett Glass is not 
  representative of the BSD community.  (Nor am I, of course.)

  Some very different and much more balanced viewpoints on the GPL vs
  BSD issue can be found in the writings of Greg Lehey (a core member of
  FreeBSD) in past issues of Daemonnews (http://www.daemonnews.org):
  for instance, the one in this month's issue, 
  http://www.daemonnews.org/200106/dadvocate.html

  Thanks

  Rahul Siddharthan.


- Rahul

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