Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 21:55:37 -0500 (EST) From: "Joel N. Weber II" <devnull@gnu.org> To: toor@dyson.iquest.net Cc: cmott@srv.net, julian@whistle.com, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD based box wins prize at COMDEX! Message-ID: <199711180255.VAA23383@melange.gnu.org> In-Reply-To: <199711172224.RAA07892@dyson.iquest.net> (toor@dyson.iquest.net)
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The GPL doesn't even guarantee the give-back. As a practical matter, the GPL has the effect that if someone makes useful changes to a program, the community will be able to freely share those changes. Of course, there have been efforts made to avoid the GPL restrictions. For example, I believe that Cygnus was rather upset that Wind River Systems made a proprietary X11 front end to gdb that wasn't linked against gdb, so it didn't have to be GPL'd. Cygnus has been writing some proprietary software in recent times, too. But the GPL has had the effect that lots of enhancements that people have made to gcc did become freely avaiable to everyone. The Objective C front-end for gcc is free only because of the GPL. NeXT decided to use gcc because it was technically superior to the propreitary compilers (they were willing to pay lots of money if that was necissary), but they actually tried shipping the compiler without linking it, having the customer do the final linking. Obviously, this scheme didn't work, and RMS used the GPL to force them to share the source. I think that using the free market, with the public knowledge that the company contributes-back is a vastly superior alternative. That is true, but most companies that release commerical products seem to not be responsible.
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