Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 15:25:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Alex Belits <abelits@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us> To: Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@americantv.com> Cc: "Jasper O'Malley" <jooji@webnology.com>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Producing non-GPLed tools for FreeBSD Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.02A.9810201444230.11171-100000@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us> In-Reply-To: <19981020162923.17640@right.PCS>
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On Tue, 20 Oct 1998, Jonathan Lemon wrote: > > > The hypocrisy comes from misleadingly calling this "free". > > > > I don't think it's misleading at all. The software costs nothing, and the > > source is available to anyone who wants it. Sounds pretty free to me. > > Hmm. Please note that this is the _same_ case as with any software > that you obtain with an NDA: ``the software costs nothing'', and > ``the source is available to anyone who wants it'', with the third > line being ``as long as you agree to our terms''. > > So you could argue that the GPL is just another form of an NDA. I don't want to know, what do you smoke, but please, explain, what kind of disclosure of the GPL'ed source is prohibited by GPL? > I wouldn't say that software under an NDA is free, so the same for the GPL. GPL is unique in a way that it does not have the name of organizaton that applied it the anywhere in the terms (FSF has the copyright to the license text, but license is applied by authors and contributors of the GPL'ed software) -- once it's applied to software, it requires any kind of "sub-licensing" of derived work to be under exactly the same terms. It definitely is a restriction, however unlike any other restriction, placed by commercial licenses and NDAs it applies equally to everyone when GPL'ed software is concerned (with an exception that the original author may license the same original, unchanged software simultaneously under different license, however even that won't apply to contributions, made by others to GPL'ed versions). I find it disturbing that people don't see freedom unless they can trade it for something else. -- Alex To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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