Still more License issues

[Fare Rideau]

>>: Ingemar Hulthage
>: Dwight Hughes

>> A related issue is what position to take on Copyright issues.
>> [CMUCL and FreeBSD tradition] i.e essentially no restrictions at all.
>> I propose that LispOS code should be given away freely at no cost
>> (as is, with no warranties) and with no other restriction
>> than that the use of LispOS
>> code should be acknowledged in any redistribution.
>
> ABSOLUTELY
>
What if Microsoft, or whoever, then takes your code,
make it proprietary, and cast customers into another world
of submission to their lousy substandards?
That's the only thing you can hope to gain that way!

>> This is somewhat different from the 'Free Software Foundation's (FSF)
>> approach, adopted by Linux, which through complicated restrictions,
>> try to ensure that derivative works are also released under the same
>> license.  I personaly think that's unnecessary and a detriment to
>> commercial use.

How do you imagine GPL is any detrimental to fair commercial activity?
Aren't Cygnus, RedHat, and more, successfully selling services around
free software? Isn't Caldera marketing commercial software for Linux?
Come on! Stop the anti-FSF paranoia!
Have you read the GPL? And the comments made about it in GNU documentation?
How is it any complicated?
   I'd accept that the GPL be rejected as a deliberate choice,
but not on blattantly false grounds!

>[BSD license vs GPL, Hence BSD vs Linux]

> I greatly support the
> ideal of "this is free, use it in good health", rather than the FSF
> concept of "this is free, use it and you are under our control".
>
That GPL code be under control of anyone is a ridiculous Myth.
That's not only false, but contrary to the very purpose of GPL,
which precisely says that not only is the code not
under the control of author, the FSF, or anyone,
but *it cannot be made to become so by anyone*.
Such is the meaning of GPL.
Unrestricted license means that a big company could come,
steal it, sell it for hard bucks,
claim it's theirs, just having to display a vague message somewhere
about *some* code being from the original author,
and specifically modify code in lousy proprietary ways
to lock the market into their hands,
so that they benefit from the code you wrote,
and forbid other people to do so too.

> Yes Fare, I saw your message on this - by "use" I also mean "modify,
> incorporate, extend".
>
Linux accepts modules. Your hooks and patches need be GPL,
but whatever code you add to Linux through modules needn't.

> Being practical for commercial endeavors can only help us in the long run.
How is the GPL not practical?
By preventing racket on alleged software ownership,
it encourages a market of software *services*.
It favorizes commercial services; proprietary software impedes them;
BSD style license means someone can make *your* code *his* propriety.

> As much as I would like everyone to supply all source code with
> everything, this is not going to happen in the real world of competition
> and technical support.
Of course it will! It will be hard and slow, but sure, and eventual,
because freedom of information is a natural right,
because it makes economy work better.

> Only the popularity of free OSs and applications
> - with source code - and their proven utility in commercial environments
> will ever convince any software supplier differently -- and then only
> because their customers, having seen the light, demand the sources.
We'll offer them even before they demand it.
We must educate the masses, not wait for them to become educated magically.

>> If Linux is used as the basis for LispOS some care need to be taken to
>> stay clear of FSF license restrictions, unless, of course, it is the
>> consensus that LispOS should be released under FSF license too.

It is my opinion that we shall *voluntarily* use the GPL,
and/or the LibGPL, wherever appplicable
Of course, care should be taken to not contaminate CMUCL.

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