FSF's Opinion of the Apple Public Source License

Stian Engen writes "Bradley Kuhn of the FSF does not recommend the release of new software using the Apple Public Source License (APSL) 2.0 despite its newly accuired Free Software License."

Comments

And?!?

[tbien]

Since when does the FSF recommend other software licenses then the GPL? Even the LGPL isn't recommended.

Re:And?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you create a license which is compatible semantically with the GPL, then the FSF will approve it.
Besides, I'm pretty sure that if you find out flaws in the GPL, or devise a new license including ideas that the FSF didn't think of, the FSF will certainly consider these ideas, and eventually include them in the GPL if they are valid.

Re:And?!?

[zerocool^]

Why? Socialism goes against human nature and evolution. It supports the weakest while hurting the strongest, it assumes what everyone wants to work the same by giving them the same rewards?


As a historian, I must point out here that people's idea of socialism (as in my parent post) are often very wrong. We were all brought up to believe (those of us currently older than 12) that Russia is the devil, and that socialism and communism and marxism and stalinism are all equivilant, and all bad.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Merriam-Webster defines socialism as: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

Between Winston Churchill and Margret Thatcher (30 years), the UK was essentially a socialist system. The labour party, voted into office at the end of the war (in '45), recognized themselves as socailists, and their immediate goal was to set up a welfare state.

Did socialist Britain involve concentration camps, millions of civillians dead at the hands of their government, and widespread poverty? No. In fact, their goal (guided by the beverage report) was to establish the abolition of want.

The '45 government implemented the nationalization of the Bank of England (like our federal reserve), the Coal industry, the electric and gas industry, and various other industries, including steel and air transport (British Airways). They also passed the Insurance Act which provided unilaterial insurance for unemployment, sickness, and maternity leave, and they also passed the Health Services Act, which guaranteed free health care at the doctor of choice, including dental and eyecare.

Sounds good for me, I'm all about equality. If you can afford better, that's cool, but every one should enjoy a base-line equality that's above any sub-standard conditions.

And they did it without significantly raising the taxes above what people were already paying under Churchill in '44 to suppliment the war effort.

Socialism can go awry, just like capitalism can. The reason socialism sometimes gets a bad rap is because 1.) anti-russian upbringing in the US, 2.) when socialist governments go bad, people get screwed hard, because socialist ideology places *gasp* trust in human nature.

Linux isn't about socialism, it's capitalism in it's finest form.

How so? I don't think that linux is a political entity. However, it's CERTAINLY not capitalist. The very definition of capitalism involves free market enterprise, and giving away your product for free when you've worked long hard hours on it is a very anti-capitalist thing to do. Merriam Webster again: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market. In a capitalist sense, linux should not exist, because price is indicitive of relative worth. Since linux is worthless (monitarily), it therefore follows that it should be worthless (as a product). If it had worth, as it's competition does, it would also cost a comparable amount to it's competition. In theory, if the product were not worthless (as a product), then people would be willing to pay for it, and therefore someone would sell it. Yet, no one sells linux. People sell proprietary drivers, support, and custom applications, but no one sells a kernel called "Linux".

And yet, despite the competition being, according to capitalist theory, "better" (by virtue of costing more), 63% of websites that netcraft tracks are running Apache.

This'll probably get me modded down to the basement...

I hope so. Not for your pro-microsoft statements (which most intelligent users of slashdot will agree with: in general, office is an excellent business productivit

not so orwellian anymore

[MrFreak]

Its a hell of a lot better than the old license. And its not like developers working with Darwin have much of a choice. I mean, who is going to use the APSL on a non Apple derived product?

Yet another duplicate story

[Calibax]

I guess that Michael needs to learn to review previous stories - this story, complete with the details about FSF approving but not recommending it, was covered in an article three days ago.

In any case, I can't really imagine the FSF recommending any license other than their very own GPL, now the darling of IBM and the open source movement in general. Not that it isn't deserving of this adoration, as it may have saved Linux from SCO.

Re:Let's get down to brass tacks here.

[MalleusEBHC]

But who really expects them to be Free?

RMS and the FSF. Then again, the GNU/Hippy crowd often reminds me of a greedy, petulent child. When MacOS was completely proprietary, Apple was evil for not letting the code roam free in wild fields as it is apparently entitled to. When Apple opened up some code, they were chastisted for not opening it in the manner that the FSF demands... err, politely asks. Now Apple has changed its license to appease the FSF, but the first thing the FSF does is spout off about how the changes aren't good enough, and even if they were Apple would still be condemned for not opening up all of OS X.

Frankly, I think Steve should tell RMS to shove it. Apple has already given back a lot of code (ZeroConf, KHTML updates, etc.), but the FSF is never going to be happy. Apple should just continue to make jobs for lots of developers and make quality products, be they proprietary or open source.

FSF bashing , yet again

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it incredible that all the posters to the SCO stories say how terrible the land grab is and yet here, the majority of posters are criticical of the FSF for endeavouring to prevent that kind of nonsense from happening again. I don't pay too close attention to people's usernames so there may be a completely different demographic contributing to both stories but I suggest that those posting here get out their history books and start reading. You may then understand why the "idealogy" of the FSF is so important and precious.

Free Foftware is as communist as church!

[maynard]

Hey buddy,

When a congregation collectively works together to feed the poor by cooking and delivering large amounts of free food, is that communism too? The restaurant owner next door might lose some business. How about when the congregation runs a car wash to collect money toward housing renovations for the poor? Is that communism? The car wash owner down the street might think so. Is it communism when individuals donate a few bucks after Sunday service? Isn't that -- by your line of logic -- communism too?

It's not though. Communism is -- by definition -- ideology enforced by governmental institution and bears no relationship to individuals, acting on principals of free association, freedom of speech, and freedom of commerce (in this case the freedom to donate one's time and effort) toward a collective goal. You're simply red baiting free software authors for committing acts of FREEDOM in a free society. It is my right to donate money to church, the ACLU, EFF, or - *gasp* - even the FSF. Just as it's my right to donate code under whatever license I might choose. A very different proposition from the government forcing me to give my code away under communism, or for that matter, a government which prevents me from giving my code away. In both cases, we're talking about government restricting individual freedom and rights to enforce a certain ideology.

Communism my ass.

--Maynard