Date: 19 Dec 2001 20:08:02 -0800 From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Jeremy Karlson <karlj000@unbc.ca> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: GPL nonsense: time to stop Message-ID: <b2itb2y1nh.tb2@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0112190048271.29122-100000@ugrad.unbc.ca> References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0112190048271.29122-100000@ugrad.unbc.ca>
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Jeremy Karlson <karlj000@unbc.ca> writes: > ... We could snag a copy of GCC before the "license change" and just > continue on with it under the GPL. Isn't that the point > of the GPL - to restrict the ability of someone to do something > proprietary, even if it is Stallman himself? Please tell us how the GPL restricts the ability of someone to do something "proprietary" any more than the BSD licence does (or the MIT license, which I suppose RMS knew before creating the GPL, does)? I don't think you can, because that isn't the point of the GPL. No, the real point of the GPL is to encourage someone to DO something "proprietary". Namely, to encourage (to put it politly -- better might be "coerce" or "force" or "bully") people (those wishing to save time and money by reusing some or all of the GPL'd code in their own creation) to withhold the results of their work from closed (and to a lesser extent non-GPL open) software developers. P.S. Please understand that one is being proprietary when one uses the GPL or even the BSDL. One is the holder of exclusive proprietary rights, namely copyrights. Licensing them under liberal or strict conditions doesn't change that. Most copyright statements (including those on GPL'd code) should (and most do) include "All Rights Reserved" as a warning, because that is the truth. Something is either proprietary or in the public domain. I think it's fair to refer to something being more proprietary or less, as an idiomatic way of saying that the proprietor has withheld his proprietary rights (distribution, etc) under more or less stringent conditions, but please don't engage in GNU-speak like Bruce Perens who says (in the book "Open Sources...") "The GPL's definition of a proprietary program is any program with a license that doesn't give you as many rights as the GPL." (He's a principle author of GNU-speak, but this derives from RMS. BTW, the body of the GPL doesn't even use the word and the rest of it just uses it in passing. One can't believe everything one reads, even in a book. Also, even closed source licenses could give you as many rights as the GPL does; they would just have different conditions.) And "proprietary" doesn't even mean "closed". "Closed" does, though; people should use it more often. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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