Date: 20 Jan 2003 18:12:41 -0800 From: swear@attbi.com (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: GCC as a selling point for FreeBSD? (Not!) Message-ID: <hvadhvp7xi.dhv@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <20030120160000.F1857@papagena.rockefeller.edu> References: <sj65sjr67h.5sj@localhost.localdomain> <20030120141556.E1857@papagena.rockefeller.edu> <20030120160000.F1857@papagena.rockefeller.edu>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> writes: > Strange. Are you thinking of Matt Dillon? Though I see no > resemblance: he doesn't troll lists about the GPL and has in fact made > contributions to linux in the past. Nope, not Matt; I knew he's done a lot of work on it lately. It was a fairly strong memory, but it appears I dreamed it up; I find nothing by googling -chat and -questions for the last couple years I've been a FreeBSD user. Sorry. > At one time I thought Brett was at least honest in his GPL-hatred: a > net search showed how wrong I was. See > http://www.flora.org/lynx-dev/html/month101999/msg00072.html > and the related thread. > > Briefly -- he wanted to use the code of lynx in a commercial project, > which he tried to portray as a charitable project to help blind users. > His idea of "charity" was that it was out of the question to do it > unless they could be financially remunerated or at least recover their > costs. I just read/skimmed it. He seemed quite honest about his intentions. He couldn't do it for free but planned to do it for very cheap. A valid and common way for skilled people and companies to do charity. > People pointed out that contributing his changes to the lynx > project could potentially benefit many more blind people, and also > directed him to other differently-licensed text-based browsers like > w3m; he didn't acknowledge these suggestions. It should be his business to decide what he gives away. Part of the value of his work or free source code licenses. I suspect he would have put his work under a BSD-like license if the lynx people would have; it should suprise nobody that he wouldn't release his source under the GPL. Even if wouldn't ever release source code is not a good reason for GPL users to withhold their code from him; at least not when they promote it as "free" and "non-proprietary" software. But that's just my opinion; they're free to punish people outside their "Guild for a New Unix" if they want to play that game. > Unlike the freebsd-chat > crowd, the lynx people clearly weren't familiar with him to start > with; nevertheless they saw through his game quite quickly. As I said, there was nothing to see through. He was giving his sermon loud and clear. > In a nutshell, this is a guy who will not contribute code, even to > such a "charitable" project as a web browser for the blind, unless > he's paid for it. (When I asked, he confirmed this in a private email > to me a year or two ago, which left me revolted.) The very last thing > he would ever do is contribute code for free to FreeBSD, even if he > were capable of doing so. What you failed to mention is that he was willing to pay for a license with money, which was not enough for the lynx copyleftists; their price was his cross-licensing his work to them (and the world) under the GPL -- a price he was unwilling to pay. > Brett's view of FreeBSD is a project to which he can dictate, from his > armchair, what policies they should follow. It means no more to him > than that. Well, I'm sure that's a gross exaggeration, but I get the point: if you're only a user, be careful what you -chat about. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?hvadhvp7xi.dhv>