Re: A friendly #linux
On Tue, 16 Jun 1998 22:45:28 -0700 (PDT), James Blackwell wrote:
>> >Oh, I'm sure that they have the motive *currently*, but companies have
>> >a very nasty tendancy of not remaining that way for ver long.
>> No, individuals do.
>Perhaps individuals do, I'm not able to make that judgement. But
>companies do on a regular basis. My poster child of companies loosing
>good intentions is "Walt Disney Co".
Companies are nothing more than individuals. The company did not make a
bad turn, the individuals at the top who make the decisions made a bad turn.
The individuals at the bottom who follow said decisions remained with the
company because they needed the money to survive. A company has no
self-awareness, no defenses, no thought processes.
>> >*ALL* ? Then why is linux free? gcc? gdb? Xfree? freeciv? bash? tcsh?
>> >gimp? sendmail? init? inetd? ksirc? debian? bison? grep? gzip? sed?
>> >emacs? tar? joe? perl? groff? bc?.........
>> Exactly my point.
>Howso?
They exist because individuals decided to create them and make them
freely available. More to the point, they exist because some individuals
decided to come up with the concept of the FSF and the GPL, other individuals
thought it was a keen idea and released their software under that license.
The facts are, however, that each of these individuals is, most likely,
part of some company. If not a company, then a school. Or, to complete the
picture, some orginization. Is not the FSF an orginization? Does the fact
that they are are part of companies belittle their efforts in this field? If
they were all a part of the same company would it belittle their efforts in
this field?
Answers, for those keeping track, are yes, no and no.
So why the paranoia when a group of individuals form a single company to
further their goals?
>protectee, that needs my help to keep it the way it is. I figure if I
>go through this effort, not only can I enjoy Linux (as Linux), but then
>you can enjoy it.
But I cannot enjoy it. You have shown hostility towards me and my views.
Quote, "That's fine. Keep your windows world in the windows world, and leave
linux alone. Us idealists don't need you." Yet, here is another one for you,
from the social contract of the "idealist's distribution" as you once
described Debian to me in a msg on IRC.
"Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software
We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software community.
We will place their interests first in our priorities. We will support the
needs of our users for operation in many different kinds of computing
environment. We won't object to commercial software that is intended to run
on Debian systems, and we'll allow others to create value-added distributions
containing both Debian and commercial software, without any fee from us. To
support these goals, we will provide an integrated system of high-quality,
100% free software, with no legal restrictions that would prevent these kinds
of use."
"We will support the needs of our users for operation in many different
kinds of computing environment."
And...
"We won't object to commecial software that is intended to run on Debian
systems, and we'll allow others to create value-added distributions
containing both Debian and commercial software, without any fee from us."
It seems that in your religious ferver you have even strayed from those
words, have you not? In the first quote what happens when a person runs a
Debian system with Red Hat. According to that social contract the Debian
people will help out. Furthermore, by the second quote, someone could
package Debian with binary-only X servers under NDA and that would be
peachy-keen with them.
Furthermore, in the section of what is considered free software we find a
few more gems.
"No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons."
...must not discriminate against any person or group of persons...
"No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a
specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from
being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research."
...it may not restrict the program from being used in a business...
Business, what you call a "company".
Finally, one more nugget for thought...
'Bruce Perens wrote the first draft of this document and refined it using the
comments of the Debian developers during a month-long e-mail conference in
June, 1997. He later removed the Debian-specific references from the Debian
Free Software Guidelines to create "The Open Source Definition".'
What I have been quoting from was the precursor and is pretty much what
the Open Source movement is based on. So even though I have been taking jabs
at your loyalty to Debian (for a reason) it would all apply even without
them.
>Yah. I'll try to figure out how to fix it tomorrow morning.
What software are you using to redistribute the list?
--
Steve C. Lamb | Opinions expressed by me are not my
http://www.calweb.com/~morpheus | employer's. They hired me for my
ICQ: 5107343 | skills and labor, not my opinions!
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