Re: Free software
From: Mark Shuttleworth <marks@thawte.com>
> Without wanting to raise the anybody's hackles, I'd like to ask this list
> what's wrong with a company that wants to contribute it's technology to
> Debian, but not destroy any competitive advantage it might have in the
> market?
Nothing at all. However, there are good ways and bad ways to do it.
Developing software as free and then changing to a non-free license is
a bad way. Obviously, we would respond by maintaining the last free version.
I think you missed out on the free software guidelines discussion. You
can find the guidelines on our web site now, and I suggest you read
them. They are intended to make Debian useful to anyone who might want
to embed it in a system or derive from it. It is obviously not in
Debian's interest to issue systems that can be used by "everybody but
embedded systems developers and compiler developers", for example.
You suggested that Sun should package Debian, but the very license we are
discussing would prevent them from doing so.
Thanks
Bruce
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