Free Software Licenses

[Fare Rideau]

>: Martin Cracauer, in a message Re: FreeBSD and Linux

> Additionally, please take License issues *very* serious. The GPL
> doesn't allow includion of sources with *any* other licenses.
Of course it does!
It just means that the modified GPL package still be GPL.
BSD license (and other) just imply that the copyright be preserved
and acknowledged, which is perfectly compatible with the GPL.
   When a GPLed program A contains a BSD part B,
this only means that the complete package is GPL,
but you can still extract part B under BSD license.
   The contrary is not always possible:
if a program contains GPL parts is distributed,
then the GPL stuff must be kept fully independent of the program,
or the program must become GPL.

> Let us take this serious and do things right, both in code and in
> copyrights. Licensing issues are a real danger for free projects, both
> because you may loose source code and/or money and because you can
> loose developers who don't agree.
>
The only developers we'd lose are either people who are trying
to steal away our efforts from us, or people who don't understand
the issues of free software vs proprietary software,
much like most don't understand the issues of a language like LISP vs C.
Our duty is not to adapt to this ignorance, but to fight it.

> Using the GPL, for example, might bring us support from the FSF, while
> a BSD lincese might attrack commercial companies to push the project
> into something usable and then take the source and make a commercial
> branch from it (which I don't have anythihg against, but others
> might).
>
*I* do already. If commercial companies want to make money by providing
software related *services*, that's fine to me.
They ain't need no stealing source code away from the rest of the world
to make a living and earn money *honestly*.
See all the companies making money with Linux.
   Now, if some companies want to take some code away from the public
and from something that's free, build another protection racket
were they'd steal your money by threatening with "legal" prosecution
on the ground that they "own" software,
then I oppose it from the deepest part of my soul,
just like I'll oppose a company that would claim ownership
on the air I breath, the language I speak, the ideas I have.
   In a liberal economy, markets work in as much as
there is free information  to judge proposed services
and attribute them a fair price.
Proprietary software removes this information,
and breaks the very reason why market works,
transforming them instead into a fight of stupefying hype,
where the worst liar, the most wicked crook, wins.
Proprietary software is the Enemy of any liberal economy;
it is the wound of the software industry;
it is the son of bitch's invention that prevents software progress
and led Lisp OSes to the nowhere there are today.
   Free software is what allows software progress.
Software is technically isomorphic to mathematical proofs.
Where would be the mathematics if proofs were made proprietary?
If you couldn't use a theorem without paying thousands of dollars,
not to the salaried author,
but to the allmighty corporation that abducted him?
Where would be UNIX, C, and C++, without the essentially
free way with which they propagated (as compared to other systems/languages)?
   Don't let proprietary software kill the Lisp OS concept a second time!
No, please just do not allow it! Say a firm NO, and stand strong!

> But in the near future I see no reason to decide.
Do you see it, now?

> We leave each component under the license it happens to be under.
That'd be quite honest.
However, I propose we use the GPL for any *new* component.

== Fare' -- rideau@ens.fr -- Franc,ois-Rene' Rideau -- DDa(.ng-Vu~ Ba^n ==
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