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Apologies for the convoluted grammar in parts of my posting - I finished it in a hurry. "Why Software Should Not Have Owners" is here. Also, see "Why Don't You Move to Russia?" in "Why Software Sould Be Free", where RMS asserts that he is not a "cawmunist".

i dont know if anti-capitalist sentiment and the open source community necessarily go hand in hand (cough)

Where does open source have the slightest connection with anti-capitalist sentiment? Through the head of OSI, Eric S. Raymond, a packin' Libertarian? Is it through RMS, the father of ideological opposition to proprietary software? Read the GNU Manifesto. Is that a work of anti-capitalism? Is it Linus Torvalds, now working for big bucks in Transmeta, an archetypal example of that icon of contemporary capitalism, the Silicon Valley start-up? Is Larry Wall a Marxist? Is Sendmail, Inc. a front for anarchist agitation?

Some Open Source figures have objections, on principle or on pragmatic grounds, to the intellectual property system. That is NOT a rejection of the right to private property. The very argument that Stallman uses to assert that there is no intellectual property right (at, for example, the "Natural Rights" bulletpoint in his "Why Software Should Not Have Owners" essay), by arguing the contrast between ideas and physical things, implicitly accepts private physical property. (And incidentally, not even RMS argues that operating "intellectual property" systems is wrong in all circumstances).

But I may have somewhat misinterpreted what was meant. There are pockets of anti-capitalist sentiment around the "open-source community": among the old GNU Usenet hangers-on (or so I'm told), and on Slashdot now (as well as loudmouths of opposing persuasions, too). But neither the heavyweight thinkers of free software (eg. Stallman, Raymond, Wall), nor most people who do serious work for it, endorse that sentiment. Let alone do the supporters of the Open Source program! It is after all thanks to the wealth generated by the scarcity economy of capitalism that the "gift economy" of Open Source can exist at all.

• The Linux Documentation Project has everything from mini-HOWTOs on single specific issues to books.
• The GNU website has pointers to documentation guidelines and a list of projects.
• I saw announcement of a kernel documentation mailing list on (urrr..) Linux Weekly News some time ago. kernel-doc? Hosted in Europe somewhere. (Helpful, no?)
• GNU also has a proof-readers' mailing list, where potential proof-readers lurk and people with documentation needing checking send calls for 'I've got this, can people get back to me on it?' or 'I write in this language, can someone check my English?'
• Loads of websites for projects seem to have contacts for feedback. Even if nothing's said about documenting, those are a good start. A lot of them have documentation - but of course each new release means someone has to update the lot - or at least check it!

As someone who relies heavily on HOWTOs and man pages and so on, I have to say: pick one! And good luck and thanks in advance :)

Although the kernel is GPL'ed, the FSF does not own the copywright. The FSF insists on owning the copywright for all the code. You can get it straight from the horses mouth here.
--
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

Well, as you say this is a never ending discussion (see for instance the comments to the GNU/Linux vs. Linux poll on /.) The reason for calling the OS GNU/Linux is that the OS is more or less a GNU system with Linux (the kernel) instead of Hurd. Also, calling the whole OS Linux makes it difficult to know if you're reffering to the kernel or the whole OS when you say Linux. Anyway, read what RMS has to say and decide for yourself.

On the subject of patents, there's an interesting article, Patent Reform Is Not Enough over at the GNU webserver. It's a reprint and it appeared originally in the GNU's Bulletin vol.1 no.13 (June 1992).

On the subject of patents, there's an interesting article, Patent Reform Is Not Enough over at the GNU webserver. It's a reprint and it appeared originally in the GNU's Bulletin vol.1 no.13 (June 1992).

>I suspect a schism will eventually divide the happy Linux community ...

For a humorous take on this, see:

http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990301.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990302.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990303.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990304.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990305.html
and http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990319.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990320.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990322.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990323.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990324.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990325.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990326.html

>... the ultimate problem with Open Source development: not enough formal engaged testing.

No less so with Open Source (or other free) software than with any other software ... and no more so either. Consider: http://www.gnu.org/manual/ dejagnu/html_mono/dejagnu.html and then look at the gdb source, full of test suites. Cygnus Software has built a bunch of test suites for gcc and egcs, the GNU C/C++ compiler, and they're actively working on Java test suites.

It'll be interesting to see if the Open Source community picks up on Extreme Programming and its testing techniques. --PSRC

P.S.: Yes, I use Windows for e-mail. My first job here was porting some Windows software to Solaris.-)

P.P.S.: I tried using Outlook, but I ran into some problems with my appointments with the year 4500....-)

Slashdotters: The last comes from another article this guy wrote, about a bug he introduced into Outlook 97. He is a Microsoft developer, or once was. No, he's not Andrew Schulman of "Undocumented DOS" and "Unauthorized Windows 95" and "Windows 95 in a Nutshell" fame.

but see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html. Here RMS (I assume this was written by RMS) argues against the "obnoxious" BSD advertising clause. Yet RMS seems to want an exclusive, GNU-only advertising clause in the Linux name

Those who benefit from the current system where programs are property offer two arguments in support of their claims to own programs: the emotional argument and the economic argument.

The emotional argument goes like this: ``I put my sweat, my heart, my soul into this program. It comes from me, it's mine!''

This argument does not require serious refutation. The feeling of attachment is one that programmers can cultivate when it suits them; it is not inevitable. Consider, for example, how willingly the same programmers usually sign over all rights to a large corporation for a salary; the emotional attachment mysteriously vanishes. By contrast, consider the great artists and artisans of medieval times, who didn't even sign their names to their work. To them, the name of the artist was not important. What mattered was that the work was done--and the purpose it would serve. This view prevailed for hundreds of years.

See Why GNU/Linux and not just Linux... as gnu.org explains it.

I guess the kind of funny thing about the requirement of posting Modifications, given the complaints about it, is that the changes get directed to an open-subscription mailing list.

And the license terminates for Affected Original Code when a patent infringement suit is enacted against the Affected Original Code. IIRC, Apple replied to Bruce Perens that, yes, they didn't define that well.

Interesting clauses from the APSL:
1.3 "Deploy" means to use, sublicense or distribute Covered Code other than for Your internal research and development (R&D), and includes without limitation, any and all internal use or distribution of Covered Code within Your business or organization except for R&D use, as well as direct or indirect sublicensing or distribution of Covered Code by You to any third party in any form or manner.
and
From 12.2 [...] All sublicenses to the Covered Code which have been properly granted prior to termination shall survive any termination of this License. [...]

IANAL, but to me this reads the same as the GPL section 7, regarding conditions imposed on you that contradict the conditions of this License, which includes patent issues.

I guess the biggest problem that people are really having is the length and the legal-speak.

-Virgil
--

Unless you can propose some radical economic system that drives the cost of production and distribution towards zero, rewards content creators, and yet somehow offers no protection for IP, then please enlighten us.

Go to this website and read. It has some very interesting ideas of how to musical artists could be paid by the very act of listerns and fans copying their music. I don't agree with the idea in its entirety, but at least give it some thought--there's more than just the present American system.

Stallman has written quite loquaciously on how such a society might function. Of course, he assumes that the majority of the population wants to be good and help their neighbor, which nowadays might be a misguided assumption. (That's required for any society to work correctly, though).

If you're a typical /. troller, though, don't read the GNU writings. Instead, just keep posting that we have to have the current IP scheme because otherwise we're all communists and there's no way to make money!

What was it that Gordon Gecko said in Wall Street? "Greed is good. Greed works." I believe that was it. Greed seems to be the entire incentive for doing anything worthwhile in this (or most any other) country. (Not necessarily the greed of the scientists that are doing the work, but the greed of the stockholders who are expecting to make money by funding the research.)

Greed is NOT good. Greed is evil! While there is nothing wrong with wanting to create a useful product or provide a useful service by which both yourself and others may profit, greed in the sense of wanting to benefit yourself without regard for others is very, very, wrong. While civil government is not called on to prevent greed, they are called upon to prevent wrongdoing, and almost all greed involves wrongdoing. Why do you think the SEC exists in the U.S.? Why do you think there is so much regulation of things like the air travel industry? Because greed prevents these things from functioning according the law of love, which should be our motivation for all that we do. If it's not, why are we doing it?

Since our entire economy depends on the ownership of ideas, I don't know how (especially with the world economy in its present condition) we could move away from the current system. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Richard Stallman and others have proposed many ideas on how such a society might function; you can read about them at the the FSF's website. Most of the ideas are pretty wild and sound very foreign to our ears.

But we must admit that the pure motivation for profit is not what drives a soecity to greatness. The motivitation to show love to our fellow neighbor what drives a society to greatness. Who is remembered with more adoration--the head of the East India Company or Florence Nightingale/Louisa Alcott? Who left a legacy of opression and who left a legacy of helping the hurting and sick?

Let us have Nightingale as our example. May we all do one tenth of what she did.

Cheers,
Joshua.

The hypocrisy in Stallman's position is that he chose to use closed source OSes to achieve his goal -- publicizing his idea of Free Software by making tools people would want to use; now he thinks it's immoral for the rest of us to work with closed source stuff to achieve our own goals.

Stallman has said that he decided early on that the FSF would use proprietary software only for the purposes of developing a free replacement (see the "Donated Computers" section). He doesn't feel good about it, he just realizes that it's a necessary evil.

BTW: Saying that he thinks it's immoral to work with closed source stuff is a bit of a misrepresentation. I expect he realizes that some people will need to use closed source software to live their life, and that not everyone can work on free replacements. At the risk of putting words in his mouth, I would say that he would consider using proprietary software to be a bad idea, but only because you're hurting yourself. Creating proprietary software is another story.

hi all,

Here is the main difference:

BSD-style license gives ppl freedom to exploit you by releasing a non-free modification of your code.

GPL restricts your and others freedom to let ppl rip you off this way by enforcing all modifications to be free/GPL'ed also.

Looking at it this way the GPL is not as "free"... but I don't want the freedom to be ripped off, thank you very much. If you are writing new code from scratch you can use any license you like (or none), but if you are going to use my code then it has to be GPL'ed like mine or you can offer me money for it under another license.

If you are new to open source but haven't read the articles on http://www.gnu.org then read them right now.

I'm not religious about the GPL (I'm a Christian), but to me it seems logical why I choose to release my code under the GPL rather than a BSD style license. (This is also one of the major factors why linux is more successful than BSD).

The reason Tim Oreilly's 'market place' makes him want to support non-copylefted free software is that the market place is always more supportive of licenses where it can rip people off for $$$$$.

Don't be content with open source, demand freedom of the code. Copyleft your own code with the GPL.

thanks,
wayne.

Apple did fight to protect its product against copying. If you think software deserves any protection, just HOW MUCH can you copy the GUI of a product before you've crossed the line? If you don't think there is a line, please state so.

As an X developer during the lawsuit and a free software advocate now, yes, I don't think there is a line at all. Anyone involved with GUI design strongly opposed Apple's lawsuit not necessarily because of the suit itself but because of future implications because of the suit. Interestingly, the FSF and LPF opposed this lawsuit and subsequently boycotted Apple.

Yeah, and Intel is "open".. Bzzzt!! How can you say that?

Because I can find information on the bus and memory architecture so well as all controller silicon for commodity x86 main logic boards online or in my university's library.

OTOH, the Apple "Technical" Library and Apple Computer, Inc. reveal little by comparison.

But I really don't care about Intel/Cyrix/AMD or vendor-specific commercial issues; I just care about the register-level info necessary to assist the port of an OS.

Also, why all the animosity towards MS? Personally, my animosity is directed towards ALL commercial software vendors equally - Apple, MS, Sun, SGI alike.

Bob R. (Too lazy to create an account)

100% Commercial Software Free (DEC Alpha + GNU/Linux)

Ole decoding tools for linux are available, information of getting the formats, and the ole tools, and a work in progress converter for converting msword 8 format documents into html can all be found at my mswordview page, or its mirror on gnu.org

Lend a hand, less talk more code

C.

If you want to understand the free software position, I suggest you go to the Free Software Foundation website and read about it for yourself.

I'm not sure if I agree with Richard Stallman yet, but his ideas are sufficiently well-considered, IMHO, to not be dismissed with a simple "It's socialism!" or "He doesn't understand the Real World", whatever the h*** the Real World is supposed to be.

Check out this for some problems that some Free Software advocates have with the term "Open Source."

Quote from opensource.org:

"if we take the very same tradition, the same people, and the same free-software licenses and change the label to ``open source'' - that, they'll buy."

What they disagree about is how to advertise it.


A fairly good, short definition of what FSF means by "free software" is the Debian free software guidelinesFor more detail see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categorie s.html and the rest of www.gnu.org/philosophy/

Quote from opensource.org:

"if we take the very same tradition, the same people, and the same free-software licenses and change the label to ``open source'' - that, they'll buy."

What they disagree about is how to advertise it.


A fairly good, short definition of what FSF means by "free software" is the Debian free software guidelinesFor more detail see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categorie s.html and the rest of www.gnu.org/philosophy/

>Why don't you quit bitching and just run HURD if
>you're so into GNU philosophy?

... you can also run it if you just happen to like cool, extensible, object-oriented software. Watch for CORBA and PThreads to replace MiG and CThreads, then see the technophiles chase the Hurd (running Berlin, of course).

GNU Hurd home page
Debian GNU/Hurd homepage

I'm not arguing that it *should* be called GNU/Linux. Hell, I don't care what it's called (just don't call me late...never mind). But a new GNU-free distribution is just stupid. At a time when the Free/Open/Whatever community needs to work together more, a move towards fragmentation serves nobody's interests. Not Tom's, not the FSF's, and especially not the end user.

Let the FSF holler all they want. If distributors agree, they'll call it GNU/Linux. If they don't (and most of them don't seem to agree with the FSF), they'll call it whatever the heck they want.

By the way, to get the FSF's viewpoint, read Linux and the GNU Project on the GNU website.

Apple has a long history of being closed, monopolistic and proprietar... ooops! thinking "different" that is...

Stuff from the GNU bulletins:

Apple's "look and feel" lawsuit against HP/MS:
(1990)
http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull7.htm l#SEC9

http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull8.htm l#SEC8

End of FSF boycott of Apple:
(1995)
http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull18. html#SEC13"

I remember that lawsuit very well - I shudder to think about the impact on graphic user environments in general had Apple won this one.

Apple has a long history of being closed, monopolistic and proprietar... ooops! thinking "different" that is...

Stuff from the GNU bulletins:

Apple's "look and feel" lawsuit against HP/MS:
(1990)
http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull7.htm l#SEC9

http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull8.htm l#SEC8

End of FSF boycott of Apple:
(1995)
http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull18. html#SEC13"

I remember that lawsuit very well - I shudder to think about the impact on graphic user environments in general had Apple won this one.

Apple has a long history of being closed, monopolistic and proprietar... ooops! thinking "different" that is...

Stuff from the GNU bulletins:

Apple's "look and feel" lawsuit against HP/MS:
(1990)
http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull7.htm l#SEC9

http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull8.htm l#SEC8

End of FSF boycott of Apple:
(1995)
http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull18. html#SEC13"

I remember that lawsuit very well - I shudder to think about the impact on graphic user environments in general had Apple won this one.

Yes, it is terminated by YOUR violation of the license. The APSL is can be terminated through anyones actions. Bill Gates sues apple, woops there goes your license...

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer!

From http://www.publicsource.apple.com/apsl. html

9.1 Infringement. If any of the Original Code becomes the subject of a claim of infringement ("Affected Original Code"), Apple may, at its sole discretion and option: (a) attempt to procure the rights necessary for You to continue using the Affected Original Code; (b) modify the Affected Original Code so that it is no longer infringing; or (c) terminate Your rights to use the Affected Original Code, effective immediately upon Apple's posting of a notice to such effect on the Apple web site that is used for implementation of this License.

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

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.

So I'm working on my GPL program, YAM (Yet Another Mailer) and I find out after a year or so that one of my major contributors has borrowed code from Outlook Express.

Microsoft sues me, whoops; there goes my GPL license -- assuming I can't get their permission to use the code, or work around the disputed code, which as far as I can tell is exactly what the Apple Public Source License allows!

Jay (=

Should software authors be required to sign their software and patches as a condition of acceptance onto FTP sites? Signing your software is a vital protection against malicious modifications by third parties and is less onerous than writing it. For those unfamiliar with the signing process, there is an excellent HOWTO document describing the process.

Surely contributors to the FSF should set an example and insist on software signing? Unfortunately, despite the risks of unsigned software, eloquently explained at Linux World, most of the software available by FTP around the world has not been signed. For example, on the alpha GNU it appears that none of the software is signed. Major FTP sites like SunSITE and XFree86 have mostly unsigned software.

• bash
• binutils
• CVS
• Bison
• Gnuchess
• libc
• cpio
• auto{conf,make }
• diffutils
• fileutils
• findutils
• finger
• gcc
• g db
• ghostscript
• ghostvi ew
• Gimp
• Gnumeric
• GNUstep
• groff
• gzip
• indent
• inetutils
• ispell
• les s
• m4
• mc
• nethack
• ncurses
• shellutils
• smail
• wg et
• The HURD
• Gnome
• The X Window System [XFree]

And btw, not under GPL does not mean not GNU.

I invite you again to run only with code that is not part of GNU.

Hint: start with libc...

Daniel

Check the software page on the FSF site. They list the programs which are officially part of GNU, and a bunch of others.

---

Even if you don't find yourself sympatizing with the Free Software Foundation, please mention the GNU project, http://www.gnu.org/ when you talk about the whole system, not just the Linux kernel, http://www.kernel.org/.

Linus Torvalds licensed the Linux kernel under the GNU General Public License (GPL). http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl, and used free GNU tools, when he wrote it.

The C library (libc) is part of the GNU project.

Microsoft can't destroy our platform, because of the pragmatic idealistic development work, and the GPL license that is the essential effect and part of the GNU Project.

I value freedom, so I call the free system GNU/Linux, because it gives shared credit, to those whom credit is due.

Even if you don't find yourself sympatizing with the Free Software Foundation, please mention the GNU project, http://www.gnu.org/ when you talk about the whole system, not just the Linux kernel, http://www.kernel.org/.

Linus Torvalds licensed the Linux kernel under the GNU General Public License (GPL). http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl, and used free GNU tools, when he wrote it.

The C library (libc) is part of the GNU project.

Microsoft can't destroy our platform, because of the pragmatic idealistic development work, and the GPL license that is the essential effect and part of the GNU Project.

I value freedom, so I call the free system GNU/Linux, because it gives shared credit, to those whom credit is due.

This is from the GNU Manifesto. Your only supposed to make as much as a sales clerk, apparently.

"Won't programmers starve?"

I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us cannot manage to get any money for standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do something else.

But that is the wrong answer because it accepts the questioner's implicit assumption: that without ownership of software, programmers cannot possibly be paid a cent. Supposedly it is all or nothing.

The real reason programmers will not starve is that it will still be possible for them to get paid for programming; just not paid as much as now.

Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software. It is the most common basis because it brings in the most money. If it were prohibited, or rejected by the customer, software business would move to other bases of organization which are now used less often. There are always numerous ways to organize any kind of business.

Probably programming will not be as lucrative on the new basis as it is now. But that is not an argument against the change. It is not considered an injustice that sales clerks make the salaries that they now do. If programmers made the same, that would not be an injustice either.

BTW, I do believe in free software, but not the GNU model, because of stuff like this

It's at http://www.gnu.org/ as is much other good information you should have read already before making an idiot of yourself in public.

That, I do not know. The new name is more acceptable to business persons, but probably less capable to convey to notion of freedom (See "open source software" or "free software"? for RMS's explanation.) That was the standard answer. But what is the real story behind all these? We shall soon see. My opinion is that ESR is perfectly happy to trade his mother if he could get his picture on the cover of Fortune magazine. Not long ago, he was mostly known for the "Cathedral and the Bazaar" article; before you know it, he gives interviews portraying himself as a spectacular hacker (!) and referring to Linuxers as "his people". Implying, of course, that he is a leader. His recent accomplishments was to re-write history and overshadow the work of FSF. Enough about Eric. The future will show the real goals of Open Source;

Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project around 1983. He wrote gcc, emacs, gdb, etc. The GNU Project created hundreds of programs : bash, the GNU File Utilities, mc, gnome, gimp, etc. I'm using this software. It's great.

GNU also created the General Public License. The GPL is a very important license to enable the bazaar-style of software development to actually work. FSF, most importantly RMS, constantly advocated Free Software, defended programmers around the world to get the rights they deserve.

There seem to be problems with the definition of Operating System. In my opinion, OS is a synonym for kernel. The OS I'm using is Linux. However, my system, the distribution I'm using, is GNU/Linux. I don't really care about names. But I do think we must give credits to the people who deserve them. RMS/Linux wouldn't be a good name. RMS might be the founder of GNU, but he ISN'T GNU. However, "Linux" as a name for the entire system, including the core programs like bash, cp, ls, gcc, etc. isn't good either. It might be easier to pronounce, but that's it.

So I prefer the name GNU/Linux. Anyway, this is something that can be discussed. But when I see these comments, in which people are comparing RMS with Hitler, Stalin, a crying baby, a piece of shit that doesn't have a life, I get sad. Sad, because this is not what I expected from this community. RMS might be a weirdow, but what he has done for the hacking community is incredibly important and the way you folks are talking about him is... I can't find the words for it...

Check out www.gnu.org/philosophy. Read about the history of GNU. Read the jargon file. Just INFORM yourself so you know what you're talking about.

One last thought... I would really suck if this philosophical issue would stop people from using GNU/Linux... You don't have to agree to work together... Personnally I like the things RMS says, and I share his ideas. But that doesn't mean that I won't use or like programs/texts made by people that think otherwise ! Although I don't fully agree with the Open Source people that want to have as much GNU/Linux users as possible, I think they're important too for our community. They are the link between us and the Real World (tm). It's because of them that Quake III Arena will be released for X. But it's because of RMS/FSF that this community his a got a soul. We need electrons to produce electricity, but we also need morons to produce morality.

GNU/Linux. (>) Copyleft 1983-1999 The Free Software Foundation - All Rights Reversed.

[wb, wilde_beast@usa.net]

This is not so. I won't go into specifics, but you can look into the philosophy section on the GNU project web server. I hope you'll understand what it is RMS and the GNU Projects wants after that.

You could always help fix GNU Checker, which provides similar functionality in gcc. Unfortunately, Rational has a bunch of obnoxious software patents on Purify that they will defend.

I suggest that everyone here who reads the article should send a letter to the paper (I did). Just politely explain what the GPL means, and point them to http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.

The reason you need freedom to fork is so that a project leader never has an unstoppable monopoly over the code base - the only thing that can give someone the power of the main users is technical competancy alone (hence why no-one forks the linux code base, cos Linus does a fantastic job, but if Linus died we wouldn't be trapped with a linux made by his half-mad brother, we could just go with whoever is doing it best). So you can always be free to make a better version, or take over a project that the maintainer has lost interest in...

Most of all, it just gives the code freedom - there will be no chance the sole vendor can decide to change the licensing and charge you lots of money, or take the project in a stupid direction.

Software freedome means no reliance on a single vendor...

Please read all the articles at gnu.org

Source codes needs to have freedom for anyone to make their own code forks and modifications...

The only tried and true way to do this as the moment is to GPL your code.

Read the articles on: http://www.gnu.org...

Linux wouldn't have got this far if it hadn't been gpled...

Don't be locked into one vendor.. demand code freedom...

FSF, damnit. Or, more precisely, I guess, FSF.

FSF, damnit. Or, more precisely, I guess, FSF.

It's a little more complicated than that. For onr thing, the packages are often created by people other than the authors of the software. In addition, freedom involves more than just whether thay're free to distribute the software. Debian's definition of free software coincides pretty well with the FSF's definition. In order for a program to be considered free by Debian, it must meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines

The purpose of the GPL is to drive commercial ones from the market via predatory pricing and destruction of markets.

You may want to read the FSF's philosophy section instead, as you seem to have some misunderstandings about the issues.

The FSF recognises the existance of non-(L)GPLed free software; see Categories of Free and Non-Free Software and has chosen to adopt e.g. X11 for GNU.

There is however a difference between "free" and "(L)GPL-compatible". In the case of traditional BSD-style licensed code, like the sleepycat db, the advertisement clause makes it incompatible with the GPL (I've not studied the LGPL in detail, but I suspect it's like the GPL in this regard); see The BSD License Problem.

You may want to read the FSF's philosophy section instead, as you seem to have some misunderstandings about the issues.

The FSF recognises the existance of non-(L)GPLed free software; see Categories of Free and Non-Free Software and has chosen to adopt e.g. X11 for GNU.

There is however a difference between "free" and "(L)GPL-compatible". In the case of traditional BSD-style licensed code, like the sleepycat db, the advertisement clause makes it incompatible with the GPL (I've not studied the LGPL in detail, but I suspect it's like the GPL in this regard); see The BSD License Problem.

You may want to read the FSF's philosophy section instead, as you seem to have some misunderstandings about the issues.

The FSF recognises the existance of non-(L)GPLed free software; see Categories of Free and Non-Free Software and has chosen to adopt e.g. X11 for GNU.

There is however a difference between "free" and "(L)GPL-compatible". In the case of traditional BSD-style licensed code, like the sleepycat db, the advertisement clause makes it incompatible with the GPL (I've not studied the LGPL in detail, but I suspect it's like the GPL in this regard); see The BSD License Problem.

You may want to read the FSF's philosophy section instead, as you seem to have some misunderstandings about the issues.

The FSF recognises the existance of non-(L)GPLed free software; see Categories of Free and Non-Free Software and has chosen to adopt e.g. X11 for GNU.

There is however a difference between "free" and "(L)GPL-compatible". In the case of traditional BSD-style licensed code, like the sleepycat db, the advertisement clause makes it incompatible with the GPL (I've not studied the LGPL in detail, but I suspect it's like the GPL in this regard); see The BSD License Problem.