From kragen@dnaco.net Fri Jul 31 11:24:43 1998 Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 11:24:42 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: "Bradley M. Kuhn" cc: clug-user@clug.org Subject: Re: linus on the cover of forbes magazine? In-Reply-To: <19980731103920.18730@ebb.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Keywords: X-UID: 919 Status: O X-Status: On Fri, 31 Jul 1998, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: > It is more like what happened with NAFTA a 4 years back: people were > writing about it all over the place, but had never read it. It lead to > *tons* of misinformation about what NAFTA really said. [0] But the free software movement is not about what RMS has said. It's about what people have written, are using, and are saying. Cygnus is part of the free-software movement, as is O'Reilly, Crynwr, and Red Hat. So are ESR, Jim Kingdon, Jamie Zawinski, and Linus. > > > SPI is not the authority. The community is. The problem is, so much free > > > software cannot be linked with MPL'ed nor NPL'ed stuff because it is > > > GPL-incompatible. > > > > It would be more reasonable to say GPLed software is not open-source, > > because so much free software cannot be linked with it because it's > > BSD-license-incompatible, MPL-incompatible, and > > Artistic-license-incompatible. (Note that all three of these other > > licenses are mutually compatible!) > > I realize that. However, I see this issue as a matter of "what came first" > and "how much freedoms are protected". GPL protects as many freedoms as > possible, often forsaking popularity and interoperability for it. The result of this is that GPL-software users cannot use their software in certain software environments. This does not make them more free. > Also, it > was around long before the MPL and Artistic license. BSD and GPL are > compatible, No, they are not. The BSD "advertising" clause is a further restriction, and as such, is prohibited by the GPL's "no further restrictions" clause. > and they are from the same era (actually, BSD does predate GPL a > bit, IIRC). However, for MPL to come out and outright ignore a very > important free software license, and then refuse the assistance offered for > a compromise shows that Netscape is a bit dubious about their commitment to > free software. I don't think so. I think Netscape just doesn't think that GPLed software is important to link into Mozilla, and so they didn't put a lot of effort into making linking GPLed software into Mozilla possible. This isn't surprising, considering that jwz (who was one of the major forces promoting open-sourcing Mozilla) worked at Lucid, and has (or had?) a link on his homepage titled "Why cooperation with RMS is impossible". (The link went to a recording of someone singing a song that began, "Join us now and share the software".) Kragen