Re: It's time to talk about Free Software
On Thu, 18 Feb 1999, Vincent Murphy wrote:
> his/her ass, legally speaking. however, all these different licenses are
> a bit of a kludge, because nobody is going to read them, much less try to
Some of them (QPL) were carefully reviewed/revised by people like us.
> interpret them, and thus we are unaware of our true rights when it comes
> to the code we write. who's to say that some time in the future, if you
> have your code buried in some part of a non-GPL, open-source source tree,
> the company can't turn around and decide to make it closed-source again?
That's the main point that companies want in there though. Can we say
code fork?
> regarding Java development needs to change. they do everything in their
> power to hide the URLs of files you download from their website so they
> can force you to click 'yes' on their conditions pages (try downloading
> JFC and you'll see what i mean).
Yeah but on the licence form you can erase the licence and replace it with
the GPL before you agree and it will still give you the program.
> i think what i'm trying to say is that the JDK needs to be free software,
> not just open source. while there is a definite need to prevent Microsoft
> from malicously trying to subvert the Java standard, by restricting the
> development process so much, you play into these their hands by being
> forced to release lower-quality products than would otherwise be possible.
> do we need another license like a Commercial GNU Public License (CGPL)
> where the code is still completely free to modify, but the author's
> concerns are accommodated and their needs dealt with?
This I think is a really good idea potentially worth spending some money
on.
> needed. should we meet them halfway, and create a reasonable license
> which they can all use, without exceptions? that way perhaps they won't
> have any excuses to make their software anything other than completely
> free in the future.
This would also probably help keep the OSD under control (if it's not too
late).
- Tom
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