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Xref: sserve gnu.misc.discuss:17855 comp.os.386bsd.misc:4386 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!ai-lab!life.ai.mit.edu!mib From: mib@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Michael I Bushnell) Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.os.386bsd.misc Subject: Re: Is FreeBSD free? Date: 12 Dec 1994 10:08:05 GMT Organization: Touring Consulting Services Lines: 57 Message-ID: <MIB.94Dec12050805@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu> References: <KSTAILEY.94Dec7103038@leidecker.gsfc.nasa.gov> <D0GvM0.5EA@calcite.rhyolite.com> <AMANDA.94Dec10155821@micro.iesd.auc.dk> <D0nLMs.69A@calcite.rhyolite.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu In-reply-to: vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com's message of Sun, 11 Dec 1994 15:56:52 GMT In article <D0nLMs.69A@calcite.rhyolite.com> vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com (Vernon Schryver) writes: In article <AMANDA.94Dec10155821@micro.iesd.auc.dk> amanda@iesd.auc.dk (Per Abrahamsen) writes: >>>>>> "Vernon" == Vernon Schryver <vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com> writes: > >Vernon> - The GPL people think people working on BSD software >Vernon> without adding GPL's are Traitors To Humanity. > >FUD! > >The FSF (``GPL People'' if anyone are) distributes BSD software >without adding the GPL. They hardly think of themselves as ``Traitors >To Humanity''. > >Please post an apology. If anyone owes anyone an apology, it is you who owe me one. Look back at the old, public charges from rms about the evils CSRG was commiting by not putting a GPL on 4.3BSD (or perhaps it was net2). Talk to some current contributors who have been browbeaten about not using the GPL on their own code. By all accounts, the GPL people (not just the FSF) comply with other copyrights under protest. It is the FSF's opinion that using the GPL advances the cause of free software. While software copyrighted under the BSD copyright is certainly free, derivates are not necessarily so, and so the BSD copyright is less effective at advancing the cause of free software. (Or so the argument goes. A cogent case can be made that the BSD copyright sets a better example [or perhaps gets more corporate sponsors] and so it serves better. I don't think this argument is correct, but it isn't prima facie invalid.) Anyone who wants to use the GPL should be and is inarguably free to do so. The only controversy concerns people who do not want to use the GPL. This has nothing to do with idiotic patents, except that the GPL mania is the obverse of patenting; it's only yet another class of people that wants to own and control the distribution what other people write. Collectivists are no more moral or admirable than old fashioned robber barons or modern patent holders. When RMS says "you really ought to use the GPL" he means exactly that: In his opinion, you would be doing more good for more people, in the long run, by using the GPL. Nothing more, nothing less. Deciding not to use the GPL, and instead using something like the BSD copyright is thus still good, because it's still free. But it's not *as* good as GPL's software, because it doesn't advance the goal as effectively. -- +1 617 623 3248 (H) | En arche en ho logos, +1 617 253 8568 (W) -+- kai ho logos en pros ton theon, 1105 Broadway | kai theos en ho logos. Somerville, MA 02144 | Kai ho logos sarx egeneto, mib@gnu.ai.mit.edu | kai eskenosen en hemin.