Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 15:21:41 -0500 From: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> To: Kevin Brunelle <kruptos@netzero.net>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSD licence vs GPL Message-ID: <p05010400b6b9b538c86a@[128.113.24.47]> In-Reply-To: <3A93BC1A.F7CF6FB5@netzero.net> References: <XFMail.010220231418.jhb@FreeBSD.org> <3A93BC1A.F7CF6FB5@netzero.net>
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At 8:01 AM -0500 2/21/01, Kevin Brunelle wrote:
>John Baldwin wrote:
> > . . . If I'm giving it away, I'm giving it away.
>
>This is one thing that really bothers me about GPL defenders.
>They seem to have a different definition of what it means to
>give something away. GPL'd code is not really free; you have
>to return your enhancements to the programmer.
Let's just talk about what your feelings are about code you
write, and not get too upset about how other people feel
about code they write. It is tricky to talk about these
religious issues without descending into some kind of
mud-slinging contest, but it would be nice if we could do it.
My opinion is that if you write the code, you have the right
to choose the license for it. For the things I work on
("systems-level" things), I think a BSD-license works fine
and I am quite comfortable with it. I can see that others
might not feel comfortable with it for other projects, as
they want to be sure that their original intent ("open source")
is maintained.
For something as large as an entire operating-system project,
the first hurdle is to have that OS doing "enough" to make it
worthwhile for a large enough group of people. It maybe that
a GNU-style license is useful at that stage. However, once
you DO have enough people contributing to the project, then
the danger of a "closed-source" fork running away with the
project is pretty minor. You would need too many full-time
employees dedicated to just keeping up with the open-source
version. And by letting the code be used in "more commercial"
projects, my feeling is that you're MORE likely to get
contributions from companies for the open-source project you
are interested in, even if they hold a back some portion of
their source code for themselves.
Just my opinion.
--
Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu
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