Re: Darwin Streaming Server
On Sat, Nov 03, 2001 at 07:56:04AM +0100, Bernd Eckenfels wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 07:32:22PM -0600, Adam Majer wrote:
> > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
> >
> > And then there should be a list of all the licenses that are approved to be free. Like GLP, LGPL, Artistic, etc. etc... It's not evil to
> > have freeware in non-free sections - it just alerts the user to _read_ the license agreement. What is wrong with this approach?
>
> I think it is much better to go along the way of opensource.org. It is DFSG
> compatible and a widely accepted Free Definition. GNU is not know to be very
> liberal(*).
Well, we all know there is the free software movement and the open source
movement.
> For example freedom 1 is not compatible with BSD licenses.
No, this is not true. The BSD license is a free software license. The
problem is that a software under a BSD license can be relicensed under a
completely different license, and then all freedoms are probably lost.
> In fact the Free
> definitions aim to define the GPL, which is not, what we want to use for all
> software.
Nevertheless the GPL is not the only free software license. If you follow
the link to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html, you will see a
jolly 18 licenses *compatible* with the GPL, and 23 licenses that can be
used for free software but are *not compatible* with the GPL.
So, I think your view on the FSF with regards to their free software
definition is quite narrow, considering what their definition actually
contains.
> Note for example defining a License as GPL compatible means the GPL can
> infect the code and "swallow" the license terms...
Yes, I prefer that my work swallows someone elses work than the other way
round. I guess I just as egoistic as everyone else :)
> PS: my definition of liberal is a different one from rms. while i say
> something is more liberal if it has less restrictions, rms thinks it is more
> liberal if it forces others to place less restrctions on it. But are valid
> views, I prefer the commercial friendly view :)
I think we already have a good presentation that the GPL is more friendlier
to commercial use than the BSD license. Sure enough, the BSD license is
subject to proprietary (and often commercial) exploitation. But if you look
at free software produced by companies, you will often find that they are
not using the BSD licenses for their free software product, but a license
like the GPL, or a compatible license, or a free software license
incompatible that restricts your freedom in other ways.
This is only logical: If you are a company, and basing your infrastructure
on free software, you don't want to give other companies the advantage to
relicense your code and modifications on it, but you want to have a chance
to get the modifications back and integrate them in your product, you want
to preserve the freedom for everyone. This is what the GPL ensures, of
course.
If you just mixed up "commercial" with "proprietary", then I am sorry for my
over long discussion of the point.
Thanks,
Marcus
--
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' Debian http://www.debian.org brinkmd@debian.org
Marcus Brinkmann GNU http://www.gnu.org marcus@gnu.org
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de
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