Still more License issues

[Fare Rideau]

>>>>: Ingemar Hulthage
>>: Fare Rideau
>: Ingemar Hulthage

Note: I had made my e-mail private to reduce noise on the list,
but as you publish your answer...

>> 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!
>
> Nonsense, microsoft can afford to rewrite everything from scratch and
> probably would want to.  Only small people are stoped by the FSF
> licence.
>
If they are small people, they can't add much to the code,
and it would be dishonest to sell the result.
Microsoft/whoever sure can rewrite everything from scratch,
but they (or another company) would benefit from better time-to-market.
Their goal mightn't be to develop the software; just to assimilate users.

>>>>  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!
>
> What paranoia ?  The only thing I have said is that there is a choice
> to be made and what my recommendation is.
>
Ok, I shouldn't have used the term. Sorry.
Still, the GPL is no impediment to any fair commercial exploitation.

> You are the one who
> uses expressions like "cast .. into .. submission".
>
Yes, for proprietary software. The GPL guarantees that GPL'd software
will be ever free from such submission.

>>    I'd accept that the GPL be rejected as a deliberate choice,
>> but not on blattantly false grounds!
>
> Good.

> However, that you disagree with my opinions doesen't make them 'false'.
Indeed, and not all you say is false.
But that your main argument, that the GPL is a detriment to commercial use,
is false.

>> 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.
> 
> This is a very confused.  You are dreaming if you think that this
> group is going to be able to produce something that can be sold for
> 'hard bucks'.  Microsoft is about the only company that can earn money
> on operating systems for PCs.  How can anyboudy "lock the market" or
> "forbid other people" with freely distributed code.
>
I use "Microsoft" as a generic monster software vendor.
BSDI did no good to BSD by making its sources proprietary.
Sun did no good to either BSD or its workstation market
(or its users, or its developers!) by having a proprietary BSD alike.

>> Linux accepts modules. Your hooks and patches need be GPL,
>> but whatever code you add to Linux through modules needn't.
>
> Apropos complicated, what is the difference between a patch and a module ?
>
A patch involves modification to the Linux source.
Hence must be GPL.
A module involve run-time insertion of binary code into the Linux image.
Hence can be released under any license you want (I still recommend GPL).

Morale: if you want to not GPL Linux kernel code,
make a GPL patch to provide you with the required hooks (if any new one),
then a whatever-licensed module (binary or source) that uses those hooks.

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