Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sun Offers To Relax OpenOffice.org License

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the muting-the-critcism dept.

An anonymous reader writes "This article at The Register says Sun has offered to relax licensing terms for contributers' code. "The moves should go some way towards muting criticism from the OpenOffice.org community that Sun was treating members as free labour and nothing else, and taking them at face value...""

3 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. This is a good thing... by Newer+Guy · · Score: 0, Troll

    Now if only Microsoft would...

    NAH! Never happen!!!

  2. Hmm by zapfie · · Score: 0, Troll

    What would happen if groups started releasing code without a licence at all? Why don't they?

    --
    slashdot!=valid HTML
  3. Re:What Bill Joy thinks about open source licensin by civilizedINTENSITY · · Score: 1, Troll
    What Bill Joy *really* thinks...

    http://monkey.org/geeks/archive/9911/msg00006.ht mlEntitled

    "Free means FREE GODDAMMIT! (the GPL is EVIL)" Mr. Joy eloquently presented his opinion on the Free Software licensing debate which has raged through engineering circles ever since East Coast programmer and Free Software advocate Richard Stallman hired several copyright attorneys to develop his so-called "CopyLeft" General Public License. Here is an excerpt:
    Free means FREE GODDAMMIT! (the GPL is EVIL) I sit here at my terminal coding a storm in my vi, a malloc() for some array, while strncpy() bounds a check, but inside I seethe -- inside I rumble, at all the lines locked up, and the derived headers claimed with glee, for I know the caged free() consumed by the GPL! Free means FREE GODDAMMIT, it means I take and offer as I please, it doesn't mean to taint my work, just because I swiped some header, or one little readline, it's the state of being FREE, as opposed to the state of being NOT FREE! Don't you understand RMS, the GPL is EVIL!, it's a blight of a free license, and a virus to behold, consuming all code afterwards, in an atomic chain reaction, like red tide spread across our ocean, all our oysters now inedible! Free coders far and wide, listen to my swan-song by the sea, for while Solaris kicks BSD's ass, and my SCSL is a sight to see, at least BSD and MIT leave code FREE, unlike that UNAMERICAN red GPL crap, with it RMS will suck you dry, Because Free means FREE GODDAMMIT! and The GPL is EVIL!
    When asked for comment Richard Stallman had only this to say,"Wow, Bill is a terrible poet!"