Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 20:26:40 +0100 From: Nils Holland <nils@tisys.org> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@blarg.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: IBM's intentions with JFS (was: IBM suing (was: RMS Suing was [SUGGESTION] - JFS for FreeBSD)) Message-ID: <20011217202640.B48114@tisys.org> In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20011217094324.029b58d0@localhost>; from brett@lariat.org on Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 09:56:15AM -0700 References: <3C1875D6.5DE4F996@mindspring.com> <3C186381.6AB07090@yahoo.com> <20011214122837.O3448@monorchid.lemis.com> <3C19807D.C441F084@mindspring.com> <4.3.2.7.2.20011214175450.02da2a90@localhost> <4.3.2.7.2.20011215232233.00e74cc0@localhost> <4.3.2.7.2.20011216221810.031b6820@localhost> <4.3.2.7.2.20011217001345.00e26280@localhost> <vmk7vm2jbu.7vm@localhost.localdomain> <4.3.2.7.2.20011217094324.029b58d0@localhost>
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On Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 09:56:15AM -0700, Brett Glass stood up and spoke: > > The fact is that it's NOT all free software. The GPL is something I have midunderstood for a long time. Basically, as it seems to me, it took restrictions away from one side and simpyl put them on the other side instead. So the GPL does contain the same ammount of restrictions as other (commercial) licenses, only the restrictions were shuffled around a bit. Still, the GPL doesn't become a better license that way, and what it has to do with "free" is still something I don't understand. After all, if we took a prisoner from his cell and let him go wherever he wanted but kept him under full-time surveilance, we would not really consider him much more free (in the sense of the real meaning of "free") as before. However, that's exactly the way the GPL works, according to my understanding. > As for the fact that the BSDs are dependent upon a GPLed toolchain, this > is a terrible historical accident that arose because of insufficient > understanding of the GPL's ramifications and intent. First of all, I guess there's still some "insufficient understanding" of the GPL today. Something should be done about this. Then, I don't think that we can remove the GPLed tools from FreeBSD. If we did this, we would probably face a year of a total standstill of the project - the question is if that's worth it. It's definately worth, though, to have a look how much the current use of GPLed code currently puts us at risk, and then doing something about those parts that are really unbearable. Greetings Nils -- Nils Holland Ti Systems - FreeBSD in Tiddische, Germany http://www.tisys.org * nils@tisys.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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