Re: gpl - Re: Gentoo compromised too
On Fri, Dec 05, 2003 at 01:18:00AM -0800, Alvin Oga wrote:
>
> and in my book, gpl licenses should be changed anyway ... now's a
> good time .. :-0 to tighten its reins too
There are two aspects to GPL: "just show me the source dumbass" and "how
dare you charge me $50,000 for this shitty software".
The first is dead on: at Microsoft, there are .pdb servers so you can
get complete stack traces on core dumps. (The .pdbs in Checked Builds
of Windows are partially stripped). When I was working with ISVs, the
hardest thing was to get them to give us .pdbs, because most people
don't build know to build Symbols in release mode, and two their scared.
But absolutely nothing useful can be learned without a proper
stacktrace. The closed-source industry should emulate the "free
exchange of ideas part"
The second part is understandable but ultimately not defensible: there
really is no correlation between the cost of software and its value, so
you always end up in these stupid situation where you've spent $100,000
for software and you're pulling 36-hour shifts to keep it running. But
the correct way to fix that problem is to improve software quality and
incrementally lower prices -- the way the market fixes things. Stallman
unfortunately ate too much acid (as some of us have too :-) and got his
hatred of his parents (the root cause of all political protests)
chocolate mixed up in his peanut butter. He probably was pissed off
because his Research Grant got denied or some other academia niggling
issue -- colllege people are notorious about bitching over funding.
It's the second part that is silly and will not stand up in court. The
first part is okay.
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