Date: 27 Feb 2003 13:23:28 -0800 From: swear@attbi.com (Gary W. Swearingen) To: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: O'Reilly apologizes for calling BSD "Free Software" Message-ID: <u9smu9zacv.mu9@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <86bs0yne2d.fsf@vanilla.zzz> References: <200302261224.54884.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> <86bs0yne2d.fsf@vanilla.zzz>
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At least until recently, "Free Software" was (essentially) any software which could be legally distributed as part of a GPLed derivative, i.e., software which is "GPL compatible". (No joke.) It is debatable whether BSD-licensed software meets that test, but almost everyone thinks it does, which is almost as good. (Most people readily interpret the "each and every part" clause to their own advantage. Specifically, they read "the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License" as "the distribution of the whole must be on the terms compatible with this License".) I saw the statement from an anonymous poster claiming that RMS now has a second, more narrow definition of "Free Software" which (I'm guessing) is something like "Copyleft Software". That would mean that public domain software is not "Free Software". I'm very dubious. Anyone have a quote from one of the top copyleftists that would exclude BSD or PD software from their "Free Software" category? As for the meaning of "Free Software", let me just note that these are the same people who say that GPLed software is "freely redistributable under the terms of the GPL"; i.e., they say self-contradictory nonsense which people are expected to learn to interpret with a true meaning, while retaining the psychological advantages of using words like "freely". (Same thing with "non-proprietary" which really means "in the public domain", but which they've trained people to use when they mean "GPL compatible". BSD people should be able to recognize that software which may not be used in a closed-source derivative surely qualifies as "proprietary".) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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