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I don't think free software is an issue of concern with GPL zealots. However, Free Software certainly is. But, it may be too subtle a point for BSD zealots to understand.

No. The BSD license considers that the community includes, for example, government organizations that have a mandate to release works into the public domain

The BSD license has an onerous stipulation and cannot be used as a license for works that are mandated by law to be placed in the public domain. This is why there is something called the public domain which is already considered in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, you might say that the public domain is the natural condition of any work in the United States unless the author makes effort to claim copyright, temporarily taking the work away for a limited time before being returned to the public domain.

BSD cannot lay claim to being more of a community builder than the GPL. If anything, BSD has been responsible for the rise of various proprietary Unix systems, completely splintering the market, allowing other inferior proprietary systems to enter and dominate. A fork in GPL code could never be truly splintered as improvements are guaranteed to be made available for all to profit from.

= 9J =

Actually, anything non-GPL is not Free Software.

It is interesting that GPL zealots have a far more limited view of what constitutes free software than either RMS or the FSF. To quote from the definition of free software:

In the GNU project, we use ``copyleft'' to protect these freedoms legally for everyone. But non-copylefted free software also exists. We believe there are important reasons why it is better to use copyleft, but if your program is non-copylefted free software, we can still use it.

See Categories of Free Software (18k characters) for a description of how ``free software,'' ``copylefted software'' and other categories of software relate to each other.

The BSD license doesn't the take the community into consideration, and so the community ignores it or derides it. That's the community's right.

No. The BSD license considers that the community includes, for example, government organizations that have a mandate to release works into the public domain, and people who don't wish to take on the legal responsibility of enforcing good behavior on other people.

I also don't see the community deriding non-GPL free software or non-copyleft free software licenses. Except for a handful of wingnuts who argue that the GPL is necessary to prevent theft because they don't understand that you can't steal from an IP commons.

I strongly remember that if you assign copyright to the FSF, then the FSF reassigns sufficient copyright back to you so that you may still relicense under a license other than the GPL.

Unfortunately, the best link I could find is specific to GNU Enterprise

I only read the pages posted to /.

Ohhh, how enlighted of you!

licensing differences between BSD and Linux. Both are open source, one is free software.

And that would be FreeBSD.

As with any free software project,
The following licenses do qualify as free software licenses,....The modified BSD license.

As you can see, the FreeBSD project calls itself Free Software and the FSF says that is correct.

So therefore, Linux must not be free software, just Open Source or you are wrong about there being "one is free software."

All of the BSDs rely thoroughly on GPL tools for their development, as there are no equivalent tools available under non-copyleft terms.

For details on which GPL'ed tools are part of OpenBSD, for example, see the gnu portion of their cvsweb.

It includes GCC, the binutils (assember, linker and all commands dealing with object files, like nm, ar, etc), the debugger, and many other standard Unix tools such as diff, bc, grep, etc.

BSD developers would not be able to get any work done without GNU.

?

From http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html:

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

• a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
• b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
• c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.

How do you read this in a way that allows binary redistribution without an obligation to redistribute source code? Am I missing something?

What legal issues come up if I use GPL-incompatible libraries with GPL software?

If the libraries that you link with fall within the following exception in the GPL:

However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

then you don't have to do anything special to use them; the requirement to distribute source code for the whole program does not include those libraries, even if you distribute a linked executable containing them. Thus, if the libraries you need come with major parts of a proprietary operating system, the GPL says people can link your program with them without any conditions.

If you want your program to link against a library not covered by that exception, you need to add your own exception, wholly outside of the GPL. This copyright notice and license notice give permission to link with the program FOO:

Copyright (C) yyyy <name of copyright holder>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

In addition, as a special exception, <name of copyright holder> gives permission to link the code of this program with the FOO library (or with modified versions of FOO that use the same license as FOO), and distribute linked combinations including the two. You must obey the GNU General Public License in all respects for all of the code used other than FOO. If you modify this file, you may extend this exception to your version of the file, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version.

Only the copyright holders for the program can legally authorize this exception. If you wrote the whole program yourself, then assuming your employer or school does not claim the copyright, you are the copyright holder--so you can authorize the exception. But if you want to use parts of other GPL-covered programs by other authors in your code, you cannot authorize the exception for them. You have to get the approval of the copyright holders of those programs.

When other people modify the program, they do not have to make the same exception for their code--it is their choice whether to do so.

OTOH, Java shouldn't be used for a host of other reasons.

Using the ordinary GPL is not advantageous for every library. There are reasons that can make it better to use the Library GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Library GPL for that library.

This is why we used the Library GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use another--no problem for them, only for us.

However, when a library provides a significant unique capability, like GNU Readline, that's a horse of a different color. The Readline library implements input editing and history for interactive programs, and that's a facility not generally available elsewhere. Releasing it under the GPL and limiting its use to free programs gives our community a real boost.

This is what you should do.

"A consortium of Linux developers called the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) launched a $10 million legal fund to protect any Linux user from SCO's courtroom hounds. The OSDL's roster includes: Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), Ericsson, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Nokia, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW), Toshiba, and others." source

It's intersting that the GPL, a license designed to encourage voluntary cooperation between programers is now encouraging cooperation between lawyers as well. If there is strength in a distributed coding effort, is there as much strength in a distributed legal effort?

"A consortium of Linux developers called the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) launched a $10 million legal fund to protect any Linux user from SCO's courtroom hounds. The OSDL's roster includes: Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), Ericsson, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Nokia, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW), Toshiba, and others." source

It's intersting that the GPL, a license designed to encourage voluntary cooperation between programers is now encouraging cooperation between lawyers as well. If there is strength in a distributed coding effort, is there as much strength in a distributed legal effort?

I've asked this before but never received a very good answer.

Why doesn't the FSF and other free software advocates attempt to corner the tech patent market? I know software patents are considered evil and against the basic philosophy of the FSF. I just wonder if the GPL could be modified to allow certain patents held in a FSF trust of some sort. Then there would be incentive to apply for patents and use them in free software with the ultimate goal being the elimination of software patents all together. Right now the big corporate players are locking free software out of certain areas while free software does nothing to lock out non-free software. I just don't see any incentive for the powers that be to reform. However, if the FSF or some other body held a patent portfolio strong enough to lock out one or more of the big guys from a market then maybe one or more of the big guys might begin to understand the benefits of patent reform.

If this has already been discussed over and over then please forgive me. I just haven't stumbled upon it yet.

The GPL would not have to be modified for this to happen. Specifically:

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.

This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.

So the idea is that if GPL software contains patented code, the holder of the patent must grant a royalty-free, GPL-compatable license of that patent to all recipients of the software.

As for the idea of a patent pool, I had thought several people had advocated it and even that there were some pools in existence, but I was unable to find any real examples. There were some people who had declared on their websites that their patents were available royalty-free and there was the w3c effort, but nothing like what you describe. I guess it has not gottn off the ground yet, but I think it is probably the only answer now, so we can fight fire with fire.

But, does it come with ed, the standard text editor?

ed, man! !man ed?

I say we start taking donations and BUY SCO when their stock price falls to nil. Hell, why not short it now, then buy it back when if falls to nil? Give the boatload of $$ and all thier IP to the FSF or OSDL to hold in the public interest.

I'd love to see the look on Darl's face <evil grin here>

I happen to have made the mistake of letting several of my clients get in the habit of being able to contact me via Yahoo IM. I won't be doing that again. When freehoo quite working, I tried a number of other clients, and then had to go to the binary-only client Yahoo distributes; this required a newer libc6 and I ended up apt-get upgrading half the packages on my main machine and now some of my tools won't compile anymore.

I need to find a command line only client like freehoo but for Jabber, or else start running my own Zephyr server again. My business has picked up enough that I don't need to bend to my clients choice of communication -- a potentially pleasant evening blown scrambling about fixing shit is a high price to pay for a "free" service.

You want something done right, do it yourself. I can't let that kind of stuff be dependent on Yahoo. This reminds me of when they announced they would start charging for pop access to the email; they said they would start charging by a certain time, so I started looking around at alternatives, and then pop suddenly quit working well before the announced date. I don't need these kind of people fucking up my life.

The corporate media tells us:

The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that visible and hidden markings on the videocassette copy on the Internet identify it as the one sent to Carmine Caridi, a film and television actor who appeared in the "The Godfather: Part II" and television's "NYPD Blue."

and that

The academy has sent a letter seeking an explanation for how the screener copy wound up on the Internet [...]

And nowhere in the article do they describe Caridi as a "pirate", nor can I find a mention of anyone in Hollywood willing to compare Caridi to the Boston Strangler. This despite their apparent assuredness that Caridi has illicitly distributed copies of this movie without permission. Apparently this kind of language is reserved for would-be customers.

Whether the eCOS modified GPL is "GPL-compatible" is irrelevant to determining whether it is "Free". For instance, the original BSD license is considered by the FSF to be Free but not GPL-Compatible, as are a whole list of others. (The newer modified BSD license is, however, GPL-Compatible.)

Whether the eCOS modified GPL is "GPL-compatible" is irrelevant to determining whether it is "Free". For instance, the original BSD license is considered by the FSF to be Free but not GPL-Compatible, as are a whole list of others. (The newer modified BSD license is, however, GPL-Compatible.)

well....maybe your a troll, SCO exec, or a newb but here's a quick answer since you weren't modded away, the rush is over, and I'm bored: NO. Submitting code is not as easy as mailing a letter to mom. And for one thing, you actually have to contribute something useful for it to be accepted. To get the idea, Check this site out and think about the chances of someone actually pulling it off. You know, this person would actually need access to good code, USEFUL code, code that gets accepted; this person would have to maintain that code because things break when someone adds ANYTHING to the source and it would look mighty suspicious if the person drops contact all of a sudden. This person would also need to leave a nil traceable papertrail. Not impossible, but if its so easy, why dont you try to slip one past and see for yourself? On the other hand, if someone contributes code and claims negligence because they didn't know that they did not in fact own the rights to the code, then the person who leaked that code should be held responsible, not the project maintainers who knew nothing of the incedent. Now the iffy legal part is correctly establishing who owns the code and whether it was leaked illegally. If so, then it should be identified and removed.

But... how does this add up to the GPL being flawed? It is a LICENSE that was meant to preserve the IP and recognition of the author(s) without having to close the source -which means people wouldnt have to keep reinventing the wheel; it cannot function as a cvs/rcs source code accounting program. I cannot stress this enough: The GPL is an inanimate object. It has no means of control over who submits code to that of which it is licensing, no means on how to defend itself against "pirates" who want to burn the license and claim the code on their own behalfs. In fact, NO LICENSE, beit shareware, EULA, freeware, BSD, etc., can control these types of issues, people will do what they want. Its up to the authors of the code to decide how they want to license their software and perceive if someone has wronged them by failing to comply with the license; users are not forced to use the software and noone is pushing acceptance of the $free$ GPL'd code down the developers throats; the courts will decide what and if anything should be enforced, and the police will decide how to enforce it.

No, the GPL has been around for 20 years now and is just fine - its U.S. copyright and DMCA laws that are inherantly flawed. Its the proving whose code is whose that this mess is about, and someone is clearly lying. This weakness you speak of is a social issue. There would be no SCO stories if everyone shared their code like civilized humans, kept IP royalties to less than seven years, and linus had a crystal ball to tell him years ago that he should keep a fascist code insertion policy into the kernel to avoid the allegations that freaks would spend their time trying to sabotage the kernel. And if you check out freshmeat.net, you'll find much GPL'd code that is doing fine. Time will tell when the GPL's value will be tested. Proving authorship is another issue entirely, but if the GPL cannot convince a court that you released the code with a binding request to those who modify and redistribute it that they must also include the original source code, and if it can't convince the court that those who break it should be penalized, then the license has served only to provide a false sense of security. But if it makes you feel better about posting your hard work to millions of people, most of whom will probably not care and some might try to steal, then so be it. Its better than keeping it locked in a vault until you die merely because its not bringing you $$$. I believe that most non-profit open source is just someone's pet project that they want to share for either fame & glory or just to make the world a better place. Its annoying if someone takes your code and br

Full definition: FSF Free Software Definition.

./poster -v -mLet -pA0 all.ps > foo.ps
Deciding for 3 columns and 6 rows of landscape pages.

I was wondering, does a website exist that lists these settlements? The FSF has a website for reporting GPL violations, but I cannot find any page that lists the outcomes of such disputes. I did find this mailing list posting suggesting the GPL might be unenforcable in Germany.

My God... YES. The Windows version of the iPod has been out for ages. Since the first generation, in fact. It used to work with MusicMatch, now it runs on iTunes for Windows. There are even a few Linux tools to work it already. Hell, it can even RUN Linux if you want.

The GNU / FSF organization has an organization exactly for this purpose. How successful are they?

1) Apart from the SCO mess, little is seen in courts regarding this kinda cr@p, and
2) They pretty much self-fund off the results of these clashes...

A'rpi / Gabucino / whomever needs to contact Eben Moglen et al on this sort of stuff : license-violation@gnu.org.

Sort of.. You do have to agree to its terms to use it. The terms state that if you modify & distribute, then you must make the source available. Without agreeing, you're using someone else's copyrighted code without a license.

That's a common misconception. You need no license to *use* GPL'ed software. I quote the GNU General Public License:

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

So you see, there is no need to accept the terms of the GPL to simply use GPL'd software; you only accept the license by redistributing the software.

Here is a link to the FSF's enforcement philosophy:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html

They generally work on infringement issues with software to which they hold the copyright, but they consult for and advise others in infringment situations as well.

Anyone recall the MySQL vs. NuSphere case? A few reminders:

GPL enforcement goes to court for first time in MySQL case
Affidavit of Eben Moglen on Progress Software vs. MySQL AB Preliminary Injunction Hearing
FAQ on MySQL vs. NuSphere Dispute

This was over 2-3 years ago. But again, the GPL itself, will not be "tested" in court, because violations and violators are easy to find, and prove. Once you violate the GPL, everything else above and beyond that, are U.S. Copyright violations (and in some cases, Lanham Act violations).

Most companies settle out of court, because the cost of public embarrassment would be much more damaging to them. I personally know, because I've got 4 active GPL investigations of my own going on three projects I actively contribute to (and one I am the primary maintainer of), and one company backed WAY down, once they realized the huge financial and public penalty for not complying with our license.

No company wants to take the GPL to court, mostly because if it gets that far, the developers/FSF/community have already done their homework, and can prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, a violation. Penalties range from $30k/USD to $150k/USD per violation once the GPL itself is violated and rights to continue using it are stripped. For a site that provides "free downloads" of a product that might contain violating code, that can get quite expensive.

Well lets see now...

Section 0. They're charging a fee (other that for the physical act of transferring a copy, or for a warranty)

Section 6. SCO are attemtping to impose further restictions (binary only licenses)

And the catch all... Section 4. Attempting to distrubute the software outside of the terms of the licence, terminates the license, therefore SCO is in breech for distributing any copy at all now.

Any others, anyone?

How can people say BSD is dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. Would you buy software from them? I don't think so! You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

DRM is digital rights managment isnt it?

Nope

i agree w/ you generally; these "elites" are a strange sort.
their circle is dot-sized, enforced by a bought-out court.
what do they know of the suffering of those around?
what do they care of the ignorance that so abounds?
concentrate power for inevitable abuse.
delegates cower to preserve the livelihood noose.

but "elite" isn't so bad if the elitism fits.
e.g., the most elite hackers don't proprietize bits.
their elitism flows from a practiced philosophy.
(they're really good at it, probably better than you and me.)
let us aspire to be elite in that same mode,
to write the right stuff even if it's lame code.

The only booth girl worth caring about...

How can people say BSD is dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. Would you buy software from them? I don't think so! You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can people say BSD is dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. Would you buy software from them? I don't think so! You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

What to do? I confess I don't know. It'd be nice for Linux/FOSS to maybe have an associated legal entity tasked with promoting Linux/FOSS in the market and protecting Linux/FOSS in the law. Ideally, a not-for profit organization. (A honest to goodness charity would be better, at least your legal defense contributions would be a tax deduction...)

I think we all know of a couple of organizations that when put together sorta fit your description: first the Free Software Foundation. Eben Moglen in fact has been enforcing the GPL quietly for quite some time. As for promoting Linux/FOSS in the market, that's done by another organization, the the Open Source Initiative. The only problem is that the philosophical differences between the two camps make it difficult for them to collaborate at the level you hope they could... Yes, they can collaborate on writing software, but promoting FOSS in the market and defending it from messes like SCO requires that they find a philosophical middle ground of some kind. :(

The OSI is a non-profit corporation, while the FSF is actually an honest to goodness charity. Both of them, if they could work together at a deeper philosophical level, could be just the type of organization you describe.

1) Microsoft's "Shared Source" is not free. Free Software is. If you're not familiar with Free Software, please go here and learn.

2) Please point out where you are being charged for Free Software, and I'll point you where you can legally download it for Free.

3) It's spelled "semantical". And no, it isn't semantical.

= 9J =

1) Microsoft's "Shared Source" is not free. Free Software is. If you're not familiar with Free Software, please go here and learn.

2) Please point out where you are being charged for Free Software, and I'll point you where you can legally download it for Free.

3) It's spelled "semantical". And no, it isn't semantical.

= 9J =

Coincidentally look what year GNU was formed. Stick that in a troll and smoke it.

Most GNU software, including some libraries, is covered by the ordinary GNU General Public License. This license, the GNU Lesser General Public License, applies to certain designated libraries, and is quite different from the ordinary General Public License. We use this license for certain libraries in order to permit linking those libraries into non-free programs.

When a program is linked with a library, whether statically or using a shared library, the combination of the two is legally speaking a combined work, a derivative of the original library. The ordinary General Public License therefore permits such linking only if the entire combination fits its criteria of freedom. The Lesser General Public License permits more lax criteria for linking other code with the library.

We call this license the "Lesser" General Public License because it does Less to protect the user's freedom than the ordinary General Public License. It also provides other free software developers Less of an advantage over competing non-free programs. These disadvantages are the reason we use the ordinary General Public License for many libraries. However, the Lesser license provides advantages in certain special circumstances.

For example, on rare occasions, there may be a special need to encourage the widest possible use of a certain library, so that it becomes a de-facto standard. To achieve this, non-free programs must be allowed to use the library. A more frequent case is that a free library does the same job as widely used non-free libraries. In this case, there is little to gain by limiting the free library to free software only, so we use the Lesser General Public License.

In other cases, permission to use a particular library in non-free programs enables a greater number of people to use a large body of free software. For example, permission to use the GNU C Library in non-free programs enables many more people to use the whole GNU operating system, as well as its variant, the GNU/Linux operating system.

Although the Lesser General Public License is Less protective of the users' freedom, it does ensure that the user of a program that is linked with the Library has the freedom and the wherewithal to run that program using a modified version of the Library.

you are confusing free with Free. a confusion which also is seen far too often. a quick google reveals this

Open source that handles over 300tb of data!

Please don't be like Mark Webbink, Red Hat's general counsel, and give the open source movement undeserved credit. Adding a license to a list of approved licenses is trivial compared to writing the license and creating a community. The Lesser General Public License (formerly the Library General Public License) was written by the Free Software Foundation well before the open source movement was formed. The LGPL was written as a compromise in order to spread free software but strategically give up the ability to preserve software freedom in derivative works.

The GPL FAQ is a bit zealous. See the GPL-compatible licensing page.

This thread has been done before. See this kde developers blog thread.

Note the second comment by yours truely, and the reference to the RMS post.

I left it out because its not a fact. You can dynamically link a GPL library to any application released under a GPL-compatible license. The KDE libraries themselves are LGPL, and many KDE programs are BSD.

The reasoning behind it is that until the dynamic linker actually links the application, the program is not a derived work, and copyright law does not apply. Thus, the source code to the app can be released under any license. The only catch is that when the dynamic linker does link the application (when the user is running it) the license on the app must allow the resulting binary image to follow the terms of the GPL. Most licenses less restrictive than the GPL allow this. Hence, you end up with a list of GPL-compatible licenses.

Webbink's article gives the open source movement a lot of undeserved credit (GNU Emacs an "open source" program even though it was written initially by RMS and Guy Steele in the pursuit of software freedom years before the name "open source" was ever coined?) and the logic behind some of Webbink's points is in gross conflict with the FSF's stated logic (outside of a license manager program or encryption, copyright licenses are not what allow you to use a program; of the powers copyright regulates that have relevance for programs, copyright regulates only copying, modification, and distribution).

Of course, I wouldn't expect a bunch of people who routinely credit the GPL and LGPL as "open source" licenses to notice this. Placing a license on a list of approved licenses is nothing compared to writing the license and starting our community. To quote RMS, the open source movement "owes its existence to the idealism that movement rejects".

Webbink's article gives the open source movement a lot of undeserved credit (GNU Emacs an "open source" program even though it was written initially by RMS and Guy Steele in the pursuit of software freedom years before the name "open source" was ever coined?) and the logic behind some of Webbink's points is in gross conflict with the FSF's stated logic (outside of a license manager program or encryption, copyright licenses are not what allow you to use a program; of the powers copyright regulates that have relevance for programs, copyright regulates only copying, modification, and distribution).

Of course, I wouldn't expect a bunch of people who routinely credit the GPL and LGPL as "open source" licenses to notice this. Placing a license on a list of approved licenses is nothing compared to writing the license and starting our community. To quote RMS, the open source movement "owes its existence to the idealism that movement rejects".

Unfortunately this is not the case: the GPL FAQ gives, as an example of an explanation accompanying a GPL'd library FOO,

"Linking FOO statically or dynamically with other modules is making a combined work based on FOO. Thus, the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the whole combination." (emphasis mine)

If Qt's license does not include an exemption clause for linking non-GPL but free software, then you can't do it.

This looks very similar to GNU Stow, which a derivative of CMU Depot. By the way, we (a University right down the street from CMU) also used an internal derivative of Depot, called Parcel, but we've mostly phased that out now.

None of your examples are specific enough or pan out to support your premise that RMS is against choice.

Emacs. Running emacs on X did not help the hurd, so he found a new developer and forked the project away from the existing developer. The mailing list emails of the time look incredibly childish. Plus the whole man vs info idiocy.

I'll have to ask you for a specific thread so I can see exactly what you're referring to. As for man and info, the choice of info is not to everyone's liking (including my own), but this is hardly denying choice. Nowhere in the licenses that cover GNU are you denied the freedom to make derivative works or distribute those derivatives to help other people. This power could be denied because that's how US copyright law works by default. It takes special action to grant these powers.

The long held grudge against Trolltech and KDE long after they moved from their own free licence to his GPL is another example.

Again, a specific post or essay would be helpful here. I remember when Qt was not free and eventually GNOME and Harmony were started. GNOME took off and the Harmony project became unnecessary because Qt was made free. RMS RMS examined and explained the legal issues involved in Qt's GPL-incompatibility including how KDE had been infringing upon the copyrights of some GPL-covered works. This was KDE developer's fault, not RMS or the FSF.

Contrary to the picture you're attempting to paint, RMS granted the forgiveness that KDE developers legally needed in order to continue to distribute their own (previously copyright infringing) code. RMS urged KDE's developers to get forgiveness from the other copyright holders whose code they had infringed upon. This is not the behavior of someone who holds a grudge, this is the behavior of someone who recognizes how valuable KDE is to the free software community and wants to make KDE legally available to all.

To this day, the Q Public License is a non-copyleft free software license that is GPL-incompatible meaning one cannot legally combine QPL-covered works with GPL-covered works without getting special permission. This doesn't affect the KDE project because Qt is also licensed under the GNU GPL.

GNU is very political.

"The Free Software movement *is* politics" and that is not news to people who understand what software freedom is all about.

I just wish the GNU pages would spend less time putting others down and have more documentation.

Then I hope you'll choose to help them out by writing the documentation you feel is absent or lacking quality. I'm sure many free software projects would welcome your discerning eye. But I don't think this has anything to do with RMS disliking choice or denying others the ability to choose.

just Guile!? Don't forget Ryu, Chun Li, and Dhalsim! ;)

just Guile!? Don't forget Ryu, Chun Li, and Dhalsim! ;)

just Guile!? Don't forget Ryu, Chun Li, and Dhalsim! ;)