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Date:      Sun, 8 Mar 1998 20:15:52 -0700
From:      Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com>
To:        jak@cetlink.net (John Kelly)
Cc:        Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com>, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Someone needs to re-develop "Softupdates"
Message-ID:  <199803090315.UAA14157@mt.sri.com>
In-Reply-To: <35055ca1.137398237@mail.cetlink.net>
References:  <19980308191111.08309@mcs.net> <35034f2e.134015736@mail.cetlink.net> <199803090248.TAA13804@mt.sri.com> <35055ca1.137398237@mail.cetlink.net>

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> >> It's amazing how some of the same people who decry commercializing
> >> FreeBSD with donor control of funding have no objection to Kirk's
> >> commercial hooks.
> >
> >Sad isn't it....
> >
> >> Score 1 for the GPL.
> >
> >The GPL has nothing to do with this.
> 
> So you say ...
> 
> >This is simply a commercial entity that has paid Kirk that would like
> >to not having to re-integrate this into FreeBSD as changes are made.
> 
> But then you say that?  If all FreeBSD was GPLed Kirk could not demand
> that anyone license softupdates.  So why do you say GPL has nothing to
> do with it?

Because of two reasons:

1) If it was GPL, he wouldn't have written the code since he did it to
   make money.
2) Kernel enhancements that use 'standard' kernel API in GPL kernels
   such as Linux don't have to be distributed under the GPL.

People seem to make the *very* mistaken assumption that people will do
the same sort of things with code if the code is GPL as they would with
other copyrights, and fail to realize that the part of the reason they
choose to write code for BSD copyrighted code is because the GPL
wouldn't allow them the freedom to it the way they want.

The GPL isn't about personal freedom, it's about doing things 'for the
good of all mankind'.  We've already seen what happens when you
developer government/commerce on the latter, since it doesn't motivate
most people.

Further debate on this issue will be ignored.  If you want to debate the
issue, we can sit over a coke and I can bring in a number of GPL
proponents who no longer work on GPL'd code because it wasn't
financially beneficial to them.


Nate

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