Date: Sun, 02 May 1999 19:55:34 -0400 From: Laurence Berland <stuyman@confusion.net> To: John Baldwin <jobaldwi@vt.edu> Cc: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>, Kris Kennaway <kkennawa@physics.adelaide.edu.au>, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG, Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl> Subject: Re: Some thoughts on advocacy (was: Slashdot ftp.cdrom.com upgra Message-ID: <372CE5F6.9D9B0CBE@confusion.net> References: <XFMail.990502180056.jobaldwi@vt.edu>
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Not getting involved with the rest of this debate, but want to clarify something about the way copyright law works. When I have the copyright on something, I do pretty much what I want with it, since it's mine. If you want to use it, I tell you what the conditions are on you using it. Those conditions go in license. I give you the right to use it if you follow those conditions. A license doesn't put me in any position, since the product is mine and I can do what I want with it. I haven't agreed to terms in exchange for use of my own code, so if I give you two choices of conditions (ie BSDL and GPL) then that's ok. Further, if I make one version, then upgrade it, then decide to add a new choice of terms to the distribution of this new version, that's ok. You can't sue me, since I haven't agreed to keep it GPL, you have. I can sue you if you breech your contract with me, but all my contract says is if u follow the terms I chose then you can use my software. > > > Actually, (someone correct me if I'm wrong), but if you release version 1.0 > under GPL, and use any of the 1.0 code in version 2.0 that you try to sell w/o > the source, then anyone can sue you for the source code to version 2.0 because > it would be a derivative of 1.0 and by the GPL that means the source to 2.0 > would have to be GPL'd and thus freely available, which prevents you from > selling it, for all intents and purposes. It gets much worse when you have a > large propietary product, such as your own OS specific to your application, > and you want to add drivers for a newer network card. You wouldn't be able to > use GPL'd code because you would screw yourself. You'd have to release the > source code to your propietary OS, which your competitors would gladly take > from you and sink you. OTOH, such a company can safely use BSL'd code without > worrying about having to release the source to their competitors. And let's > face it, not all software is going to be free, we do have to eat somehow. So > we can't kill all possibility of selling software. > > --- Laurence Berland, Stuyvesant HS Debate <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Windows 98: n. useless extension to a minor patch release for 32-bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor, written by a 2-bit company that can't stand for 1 bit of competition. http://stuy.debate.net icq #7434346 aol imer E1101 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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