Re: what's the killer app for GNU/Linux systems?
hendrik@topoi.pooq.com wrote:
My assertion: The kernel is more important than the license. Code
trumps license. No code, no need to even use or have a license...
whatever it is.
Code without licence tends not to propagate. Linux wasn't the first
Unix-compatible one to have been written. It seems to me there was a
Unix-compatible kerlen written in the language TURING sometime in the
late 70's or early 80's. But it didn't have a free license, and --
well, have any of you ever heard of it?
Code before licenses were popular propagated just fine. Ask RMS! It's
the basis for the entire GNU movement! Code *was* propagating just fine
until greedy companies added licenses. Then the so-called battle was
enjoined.
I could send you some code in e-mail right now if you'd like. You could
modify it and send it on privately to someone or use it in your business
and I'd never know about it. Code propagates just fine without licenses.
Ironically, the places it doesn't propagate now without an onerous
license (of either the "good" or "evil" sort) is in PUBLIC. Because
people are somehow afraid of the results of their sharing.
Both the GPL *and* commercial licenses are ultimately based on FUD. If
you're scared of the consequences of simply taking some code and using
it as you please and/or the consequences of doing so: You want a
license to tell you how you may or may not use it.
Neither is Freedom. Both are restricted. Otherwise they wouldn't be
licenses.
If you simply do what you wish with whatever code you have, and accept
the consequences, whatever they might be, you don't need a license.
Nate
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