Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 05:03:53 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: j mckitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSD, .Net comments - any reponse to this reasoning? Message-ID: <3B41B4A9.F95FE1FF@mindspring.com> References: <20010630174743.A85268@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
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j mckitrick wrote: > > I'm curious to get some thoughts on this. Just when i am > convinced BSD is doing great, i get concerned by material > like this. Is this just FUD? > > It seems the GPL became relevant more than ever with the > advent of an everyman's Unix in the face of a dominant, evil > software empire. A radical solution for an overwhelming > problem. It is being contended that the BSD license is > too altruistic, ignoring market motivations and expecting > the best when we have seen that most companies do not > operate that way. > > Please, someone give me some sound reasoning that can clear > the air of this FUD. I've seen this "software commons" argument before. It was calimed to be a pro-GPL argument then, too. The problem is that it's not a commons unless it is egalitarian in permitting everyone equal rights to it; the GPL fails this test, since you can not use it in a commercial product, unless you "pay" with your source code that you add. If you have to pay for it, in any way, shape, or form, then it is not part of a "commons". I've seen people suggest that reference implementations should be GPL'ed before, as well. The problem with that approach is that unless the reference work can be used in a product, it will not drive a standard. For products that are to be sold commercially, a "look, but you must write your own code" reference is worse than useless. If TCP had been released under the GPL, we would all be talking SPX and IPX instead of TCP and UDP today, since there would not have been the money in it for a Cisco or any of the other companies that built the Internet. Likewise, publically funded developement (e.g. DARPA or other government funded research) must be usable by all of the public, including that part of the public that pays the vast majrity of the taxes from which that funding is drawn: corporations. I was really very disappointed with the NSA security extensions to Linux, since it made the code inherently a derivative work of the Linux kernel, and thus GPL'ed. I've noticed a significant correlation between people with objectivist philosophies and support of the GPL as a means of stopping other people from acting like the objectivist philosophy claims they will act, without any controls on their actions to curb their "natural selfish nature". I think most of these people should have waited until they had at least two years of college under their belts before they were permitted to read "Atlas Shrugged": they don't seem to understand that the characters in the book aren't real, and are actually charactricures, in the same way as Socialist government paintings of Stalin, looking up and into the future. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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