On Thu, Mar 25, 1999 at 12:55:12PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> > 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.
Or you see things very differently than I do, a given I would say.
> 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.
It may protect your rights, but it also keeps your code from being useful
as a shared lib for example to other software which is Free Software but
is not GPL. It discriminates against software, even Free Software. I
see this as a bad thing. You disagree.
> 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.
I wouldn't be here if I thought I had to agree to them in order to use
GPL software. However, the GPL license is something I am more than
hesitant to use for my own software because of those ideals.
> > 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.
Then propose we toss out contrib and non-free and change the social
contract openly, don't try to do it with subversion and "helpful
suggestions" that have the same effect when combined. You'll be voted
down of course--but then maybe I'm wrong and you won't be.
> > 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.
It's relevant because according to RMS the GPL is trying to create an
environment in which Copyright doesn't extend to software artificially.
It doesn't work too well.
> > 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?
The point is that they are a major threat to the GPL that some licenses
other than the GPL at least attempt to address. It's also the reason no
corporation which holds patents can use the GPL on its software.
> > 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
Talk to me when RSA and IDEA are both not patented and I can legally use
both of them.
> > 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.
HAHAHA You're joking I hope? (I would release my software freely
anyway as a matter of principle, however I'm arguing on behalf of others,
not me) Money is required to stay in business. If you can't make money
off Free Software, then you're going to make it however you can--if that
means proprietary software so be it, you can make more money by holding
the next upgrade over your customers' heads that way anyway.
> 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?
Of course I care. However the corproations you see, they do not. They
are giant, faceless entities driven by their stockholders, most of which
don't know what a command line is, what Linux is, what Free Software is,
nor do they care. They just want the money. And as long as that is the
case (change it if you can!) we will have corporations trying to resist.
And as long as they see us as a threat, they will throw money at the
problem because it's easier to spend a little now and try and destroy us
from within than lose their stockholders because they can't turn a
profit. That's business.
> And even having said that, plenty of people make a profit from GPL'd
> software.
Name three companies that make money on writing and selling software
under the GPL (not distributions of other people's software but sales of
their own) I can name only one: Cygnus And even they have resorted to
non-free software now.
> > > 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.
Because of the copyright and patent issues, and that need to make money,
they simply can not use the GPL.
> > 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?)
If IBM started to fully support the GNU philosophy, ported Linux to all
their hardware, GPL'd Notes, Domino, SmartSuite, ViaVoice, AIX, and
everything else they produce, could they make 1/10th what they make now?
1/100th? They rake in several billion a year. Could that continue?
> > 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"?
Copyright:
Copyright (c) 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights
reserved.
This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by Kenneth
Almquist.
Please refer to /usr/doc/copyright/BSD for details.
I'd say that qualifies as 100% BSD.
> > 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.
I did not do this. Not everyone who dislikes the GPL is promoting
non-free software. I fully support the DFSG and all of the licenses
which fit under it. I have some serious issues with the GPL and would
not want to use it on my own software because of those issues. You
conveniently ignored or decided what I thought would be a good solution
didn't matter.
So to repeat myself needlessly in the hopes that maybe it might actually
catch your attention this time, I would like to see another GNU license
which is more or less middle ground between the GPL and the LGPL. The
LGPL is a lot like the GPL except that it may be used with non-GPL code,
even non-free code. I would like to see a license which allowed use in
any Free Software (as defined by the DFSG) program, but like the LGPL
would cause the code placed under it to retain that license. Essentially
a LGPL limited to use in Free Software. I am all but certain that had
this existed, Qt would be under it rather than the QPL.
> 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.
Fine, and while you're at it IBM, Sun, Corel, and others will help us
smash the Evil Empire, and they smash us under their combined corporate
weight because they know they can't make a profit here and it would be
better to vie for power as the next Evil Empire.
Wouldn't it be better to create a way for them to make a profit in a way
that supports the community rather than trying to fight them all the
time? I for one am sick of having to fight every major corpration out
there. But I'm not about to give up on Free Software either.
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Debian GNU/Linux developer
PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBE The Source Comes First!
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"...It was a lot faster than I thought it was going to be, much faster
than NT. If further speed increases are done to the server for the final
release, Oracle is going to be able to wipe their ass with SQL SERVER and
hand it back to M$ while the Oracle admins ... migrate their databases
over to Linux!"
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