Re: Recently released QPL
> > Oh, come back from your high horse and land on mother earth again, will ya?
> >
> > If you want to prevent license fragmentation, use the GPL. if you want to
> > suck in all dfsg free software, use X license.
>
> Ahh, you mean use a license that grants me NO PROTECTION AT ALL or use a
> license that grants me lots of protection, but prevents other people from
> using it unless they agree with RMS' ideals? I don't agree with RMS'
> ideals. RMS' ideals involve taking away the choice to use non-free
> software, I won't support that! RMS' ideals are about his marginalized
> and to be quite honest unrealistic view of the world. The GPL is his
> attempt to force his view on others and now more than ever he's trying to
> cram his views down our throats.
I'm sorry, but your understanding is severely lacking or else you do
not agree with the free software premise that Debian is based upon, in
which case I would have to question why you are a Debian developer at
all.
The GPL does not restrict my rights. It protects my rights, and the
rights of everyone else, by preventing people from being able to steal
the code and release it in binary-only form. This is an excellent
thing, and highlights one serious flaw in the BSD license, for
instance.
You don't have to "agree with RMS's ideals" in order to use GPL
software. I know plenty of people that use GPL software that don't
even know what GPL is, or who RMS is -- much less what his ideals
are.
> He has already proposed on more than one occasion that Debian get rid of
> the nasty (in his mind) point on our social contract to support people
> who use non-free software and has taken steps to cause us to all but
> delete the contrib and non-free portions of our archive in potato. It's
> about time someone stood up and pushed for just a little bit of realism
> here.
I think he's right on both counts, but I fail to see what erelvance
this has to the GPL discussion.
> Copyright law is here to stay. It isn't going to become weaker in the
> face of software, it's going to become stronger. Why? Because while
> people like him are trying to preach to anyone who will listen, people
> who have lots to lose if they can no longer abuse the Copyright system
> are pouring lots of money into going so far as to make it a crime to
> posess and use gdb because it /CAN/ be used to defeat Copyright
> portections.
I don't recall RMS ever saying that copyright law is doomed, or even
that it ought to be entirely abolished. Further, I once again fail to
see what relevance this has to the license discussion, since GPL does
take advantage of the law.
> Patents apply to software in much of the world. Even in places where
> patents on software are illegal (Germany) things like the mp3 algorithm
And what's the point?
> are patented anyway---and in such broad terms that anything remotely
> resembing the technology is also covered. There is little chance of
> convincing the world governments that software patents are bad.
How do you know that? We're seeing positive movements on the
encryption fron, for instanc.e
> Closed software exists. While some companies are trying to reach out to
> the community, he's trying to get them to do it his way. They're seeing
Which is great.
> him and his ideals and they don't think they can make any money GPLing
> their software. They can't make a real living off of tech support and
> they know it. They aren't hardware vendors. How else can they make
> money off the GPL? Cygnus is usually cited as an example where I would
> be wrong in saying that a company can take GPL software and make a living
> off of selling it. But Cygnus also sells proprietary software to their
> customers who want to pay for it.
This is a problem, but this has not been the case for a long time and
is still not their primary business.
I wish that you, and others, would stop being so greedy. Money is not
everything. It doesn't make the world go 'round.
Do you no longer care about doing what is right simply because it's
right? Is the concept of ethics lost on everyone? Or do we still
believe in our cause because it's the *right* thing to do, even if it
doesn't make us billionnaires like Gates?
And even having said that, plenty of people make a profit from GPL'd
software.
> > The X license does support license fragmentation, the GPL does not. If
> > everybody would use GPL, we would have no license fragmentation, and no
> > debian-legal list.
>
> Eh? What the hell are you smoking? How many licenses are there out
> there whose job it is to be almost GPL but not quite? QPL, {N,M}PL, ZPL,
These people are not using GPL. He said "if everybody would use GPL."
You are attempting to refute his argument by misstating it. Please
don't do that.
> And here you go and agree with me.. People don't like the GPL because
> they can't make any money using it and the X license is all but public
> domain. So they write their own licenses. The GPL being pushed as the
> "standard" and "preferred" license is what drives these dozens of new
> licenses.
Perhaps it's the people are too stuck in their old ways to think about
new ways to make a buck? Or perhaps it's that people don't care about
what's right, and are just greedy and selfish leeches? (Ie, RMS was
right on that perhaps?)
> I happen to like the effect it has on the code itself. I don't like the
> affect it has on other people's code as is the case with libreadline.
> Take ash, a nice and minimal shell. Many people would use it more if it
> were linked with something like libreadline. ash IS free software and
> COULD BE linked with libreadline---except that libreadline is under the
> GPL which means it is incompatible with ash's BSDish license. Turns out
> that ash was contributed to the BSD project, so there's virtually no
> chance of tracking down the original author and getting the licence
> changed at this point.
if ash were under a BSD license, this could be remedied. What do you
mean, specifically, "BSDish"?
> What's good for your side is good for your side, but not your opposition?
> And I'm not "getting religious", I'm getting realistic. Is that too
> painful for GNU zealots to handle?
What's too painful is when you go and advocate proprietary software
support, which flies in the face of everything we stand for.
Our purpose is not to make people more profitable. Our purpose is to
make computing better, to remove the selfishness and greediness that
has been so prevalant for so long. Here you go and want to put it
back in. I frankly can't understand why you would want to do that.
John
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