Re: It's time to talk about Free Software
On Fri, 19 Feb 1999, Joseph Carter wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 18, 1999 at 08:10:36PM -0800, Tom Lear wrote:
> > This I think is a really good idea potentially worth spending some money
> > on.
>
> I think probably this is a bad move. I thought it a good one before, but
> I've somewhat changed my mind here. Corporations are trying to make
> Linux non-free little by little and most of the community is all too
> happy to let them do it. Binary-only applications, binary-only network
> clients(!), binary-only network servers(!!), and binary-only kernel
> drivers(!!!) are WELCOMED and SUPPORTED by too much of the community.
> This is A Very Bad Thing.
I'm very much opposed to all this binary-only code, but the companies that
are thinking about going "open source" sit down and try to figure out just
how much they can get away with. If we make a licence that addresses the
major concerns of these companies but still doesn't compromise too much, I
think this will give us more reason to reject these custom licences as
"open source".
> I think it's time to abandon the Open Source, Eric can HAVE it. We need
> to wake up those of the community that have a clue and dig in for what's
> going to be a very long night.
If we abandon it we'll lose much respectability to suits that we've gained
in recent years. If we let Eric have it it may become polluted so bad
that it does nothing but harm us.
- Tom
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