Re: Economics and the GPL

Deven T. Corzine wrote:

>On Sat, 15 Jun 2002, Francois Gouget wrote:
>
>  
>
>>>To be exacting about this, the GPL is just as "proprietary" as Microsoft's
>>>EULA is.  The proprietor (such as it were) of GPL code is the community of
>>>developers willing to operate under the restrictions of the GPL, rather
>>>than a single legal entity.  In fact, it is the coercion within the GPL
>>>which makes it proprietary -- the BSD and X11 licenses are not proprietary.
>>>      
>>>
>>There you go again completely distorting the meaning of words just to
>>fit your claims.
>>    
>>
>
>I'm not distorting anything.  I've already quoted the relevant definitions 
>from the Oxford English Dictionary to justify this usage of "proprietary".  
>The "one" in qestion, who benefits from the proprietary nature of the GPL, 
>is one community (the GPL community), rather than one organization or one 
>individual.  There's absolutely nothing distorted about the meanings of the 
>words here -- it's just in conflict with the connotations Stallman has had 
>for "free" and "proprietary", so of course his supporters don't want to 
>hear the truth, that the GPL is just as proprietary as the enemy is...
>
Interesting that you call everyone an exclusive group. Commercial 
resellers including microsoft are free to use GPL software. GPL is non 
exclusive and this is a total distortion of the definition of the word 
"Proprietory". What makes me angry about this is that it is an abuse of 
well recognized defiinintions.  If you want to persist in saying this 
then it becomes trolling.... Knock it off.


Tony Lambregts