From kragen@dnaco.net Fri Jul 17 16:24:59 1998 Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 16:24:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: "Bradley M. Kuhn" cc: clug cincinnati linux user group Subject: Re: Explaining licensing (again :). In-Reply-To: <19980717160940.02762@ebb.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Keywords: X-UID: 595 Status: O X-Status: On Fri, 17 Jul 1998, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: > ------------ > 1 a : having the legal and political rights of a citizen b : enjoying civil > and political liberty c : enjoying political independence or > freedom from outside domination d : enjoying personal freedom : not subject > to the control or domination of another > > 4 a : having no trade restrictions b : not subject to government regulation > > 10 : not costing or charging anything > ------------ > > The closest one to the definition that Kragen gave was 4a. However, I am > pretty sure the free (libre) software movement has always meant for the > definition 1d. Fair enough. Except that I meant 1d, not 4a. "no trade restrictions" is far from what I meant. > > The GPL places significantly tighter restrictions on software users than > > does the BSD license. > > That is *definitely* true, but they are restrictions to ensure the freedoms > of *everyone* that comes in contact with versions of the software. With regard not only to that software itself, but also other software that works with it -- and how closely your software has to work with GPLed software before you are forced to give out source to it (thus giving your customers more freedom to change it) is an unanswered question. > > Proprietary products derived from BSD-licensed sources are less free > > than GPLed software, but they are not BSD-licensed themselves. > > Yes, they can be. AFAIK, BSD-license software can be distributed binary > only and with binaries only. You definitely have a point here. I was thinking of BSD-licensed software distributed with source. > > BSD-licensed software itself is more free than GPLed software, > > You mean free in the (4a) sense. That statement is false if you take free in > the (1d) sense No, I mean free in the (1d) sense -- the BSD-licensed software is less subject to the control or domination of its author(s). Since the authors are not the software, they are "others". > > although it does not tend to directly promote the creation of more free > > software to the extent the GPL does. > > As I pointed out in another thread a few days ago: The goal of the > BSD-style [2] licenses is to make software popular; the goal of the GPL is > to make software free (1d, 4a). When I release software to the public domain or under an X-style license, it's because I want to make it free. > Remember that the free software movement was born *after* the BSD-license > came into existence, so there is really no way (except by coincidence, > which didn't happen here) that the BSD-license could even fulfill the goals > of free software, when free software didn't exist when the BSD-license was > written! The free software *movement* didn't exist. Lots of software was free, including BSD. > [2] Please remember that the BSD license should *never* be used because of > the annoying contributers clause. If you want BSD-style without the > silly name-dropping baggage, use the XFree86-license. It's annoying, but it's not nearly as bad as the we-might-decide-to-sue-you-if-your-software-works-with-our-software-but-we-won't-tell-you-how-closely-it-has-to-work-with-it-to-piss-us-off GPL. > [5] Which brings up an odd point. I took German as well as Spanish in High > School, and noticed that my German accent was *perfect* (I was even told > I sounded like a native when I visited Germany---believe me, no one from > Latin America is ever going to mistake my accent for native!). I am of > mostly Polish and German decent. I have always wondered if the > linguistics skills have been set into evolutionary terms and we actual > *inherent* biological traits (tongue shape, mouth size, etc.) based on > what language out ancestors spoke. Anyway, I will end this off topic > discussion, which is fortunately confined to footnotes. ;) Not any more! It's a possible explanation, but I've known black folks who spoke English that sounded just like Anchorperson English -- and sometimes spoke Black English in private. I suspect your experience has more to do with the fact that German's phonetic structure is close to English's, while Spanish's is not. Kragen