Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 14:05:55 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: "Opposing" the "competition" (was: FreeBSD spokesman (was: So what happens to FreeBSD now?)) Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20010705135915.00bb8a80@localhost> In-Reply-To: <15172.49889.276007.445342@guru.mired.org> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20010705125524.04502690@localhost> <Pine.GSO.4.21.0107031644410.16320-100000@z.glue.umd.edu> <20010703134058.A9446@mooseriver.com> <4.3.2.7.2.20010705125524.04502690@localhost>
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At 01:41 PM 7/5/2001, Mike Meyer wrote: >If the goal is to advance the FreeBSD license, that's certainly an >excellent idea. I think so too. (For one sentence, at least, we agree!) >If the goal is to kill the FreeBSD project, it's also >a pretty good idea. Neither the goal nor the effect of opposing the GPL would be to "kill the FreeBSD project." You're engaging in hyperbole here. >One of the good things about FreeBSD is that it >plays well with others. The license means that the code can be used in >a wide range of situations, and the people working on the project are >amenable to solutions from lots of other places. That's been one of >the strengths since the CSRG days. Agreed. And this is what the GPL is designed to sabotage, by licensing code in such a way that it does NOT "play well with others." >As for the "culture", anyone who thinks the GPL introduced something >new to the open source or free software culture doesn't know the >history of such (which may explain the repetitive nature of their >discourse :-). Not so. The GPL was introduced by Richard Stallman due to his PERSONAL vendetta against spinoffs of the MIT AI Lab. MIT originally licensed its code, which was developed at taxpayer expense, under a license that was almost identical to the BSD license. Stallman, who despised the notion that the code might be used by people who wished to earn money, created the GPL as a way of "monkey wrenching" this process. The GPL also violates authors' rights by attempting to appropriate their rights to their own work and preventing them from being rewarded for it. This is very, VERY much contrary to the spirit and philosophy of BSD. --Brett Glass To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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