Re: Roaring Penguin's view

Am Don, 2002-06-13 um 14.55 schrieb Roger Fujii:
 
> That was poorly worded on my part.  Perhaps I should have said "extremely
> disadvantageous".   Even an axe-murderer might behave in a police station.

which, from the axe-murderer's point of view, is practical behaviour.
GPL'ling libc would be extremely disadvantageous for the FSF, and that's
why they won't do it.

> I believe you read that incorrectly.  He didn't accept dual-license.  He
> accepted not having the copyright assigned to FSF (though multi-licensing
> is implied by this).

So I didn't read it that incorrectly, after all :-). Somebody said (I am
too lazy to lookup the exact wording) that he preferred not to have the
license assigned to not having a Postscript interpreter in the GNU
system. I'd call that practical reasoning.

> care to cite some examples?  They are at odds with linus over the kernel.
Nobody forced Linus to choose the GPL for the kernel. It is legitimate
for the FSF to criticize him if they think that parts of the current
kernel violate the GPL. It is legitimate for others to argue otherwise.
I don't see RMS and Linus as opponents in court in the foreseeable
future, though.

> What do you think their goals are, anyway?
Do I really need to explain that? I thought this is what we were talking
about all the time. They want a world where all software (more broadly,
information) is free in the sense of the GPL. They don't care if that's
good or bad for business. It is utter nonsense to say they are 
striving for world domination. They are striving for a world where
nobody can dominate anybody else by withholding proprietary information.

** Please don't get me wrong: I am not saying that I share that goal. **

You are free to dislike these goals and call the FSF communists,
anarchists or whatever you like. You are free to put your own software
under any license you prefer. You are free to sue the FSF and prove in
court that the GPL restrictions go too far. You are free to completely
remove all GPL software from your system. 

*You* go too far if you deny the FSF the right to pursue their goals,
unless prove in court that these goals are incompatible with your
country's constitution (Microsoft would certainly be grateful for that -
there must be a reason that they didn't try themselves yet).

Apart from what the FSF's goals are, the xGPL can have advantages for
authors, depending on their preferences. It may be true that some
authors have chosen xGPL naively, without thinking about all the
consequences. Bad luck. You should think twice before you write down a
license for something you create. Other authors have chosen xGPL
deliberately and in full awareness of the implications, often without
sharing the ultimate goals of Stallman; e.g. simply because they don't
want other people to make money out of their hard work.

Someone (was it you?) recently claimed the "freedom to take and give
nothing back" - I doubt that this is a freedom that belongs to our
society's most valuable ones. But here we are definitely moving into
philosophical grounds.

Martin

PS I say it again: These are not my employer's views, but my own
   personal ones.

-- 
Martin Wilck                Phone: +49 5251 8 15113
Fujitsu Siemens Computers   Fax:   +49 5251 8 20409
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