Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 01:11:45 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Terry Lambert" <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: "Trent Waddington" <s337240@student.uq.edu.au>, <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Stallman stalls again Message-ID: <006901c09be6$4fff7920$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <200102210821.BAA10627@usr05.primenet.com>
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> -----Original Message----- > From: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG > [mailto:owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Terry Lambert > Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:22 AM > To: Ted Mittelstaedt > Cc: Trent Waddington; freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG > Subject: Re: Stallman stalls again > > > [ ... ideo-logic ... ] > > > I've read this statement 6 times putting myself into the most convoluted > > frame of mind possible and I still can't understand how this undermines > > the goals of GPL, even if people start doing what Stallman says > they can do. > > The point is that it can result in proprietary code taking > advantage of GPL'ed code. You have to understand the very > big difference between "use" an "utilize". It's a dictionary > argument. > Oh, I did get that point, but what I'm missing is how does proprietary code taking advantage of GPL code constitute an undermining of the goals of GPL? The GPL license bars mixing GPL into a commercial product unless you open your code up, so that hole is closed, and as far as proprietary products and code taking advantage of GCC itself, that's par for the course. The entire reason that GCC got kickstarted to begin with is that Sun unbundled their compiler, and people who were tired of paying Sun $5K for the UNIX system, and didn't want to pay another $5K for the compiler, decided to take a look at this GCC stuff. I'm sure that there's hundreds of commercial UNIX products for sale today that were compiled with GCC. I mean, I suppose that's what he's complaining about, but it seems so bass ackwards that it's unbelievable. If the commercial UNIX software community hadn't put effort into using and putting feedback into Stallman's code in the beginning, GCC would be just another failed research project in an archive somewhere, and Stallman just a speck on the wall. Is he really bitching about the very people that put him where he is and made him what he is today? > > > Java's just another tool, nowhere near as popular as C. It's > getting close > > to peaking anyway, in 10 years it's going to be in just another of those > > cubbyholes that Perl, Sed, Awk, PHP, HTML and all the rest of > them are in. > > Java's primary value is as a cross-platform API. Eventually, > with the notable exception of bytecode rendered to run on a > handful of proprietary processors, it will all be compiled > code. > > I keep meaning to write a science fiction novel predicated on > the idea that everything standardizes to a single instruction > set, and then someone comes up with a new processor instruction > set, and uses it in the context of a crime. One of the hero's > helpers (the moral equivalent of Perry Mason's Paul Drake) has > to decode the instruction set to figure out what it means. 8-). > F00F :-) Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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