RMS on APSL

We've all heard what Bruce Perens and ESR think of the APSL, so it's time to give RMS a chance. Read what he has to say. He brought up some very interesting things which I don't think have been discussed before, and are very important (the copyright bit).

Comments

I'm so proud

[wayne]

It is so tempting to claim victory at anything that could possibly be seen as furthing your cause. (Note how often politicians claim credit for just about anything good, or place blaim on their rivals for anything bad.) I think in this case, ESR and OSI are claiming victory for something that is not entirely A Good Thing.

Bruce Perens says that he is talking with the folks at Apple about these issues. As in the case of Troll Tech and QT, I think there is a good chance that Apple will come around to a truely free license. Bruce, once a very vocal critic of the QT license, is now a vocal supporter of them because they did respond.

It is important to keep the flames down and only talk about the technical problems with the license. Other issues with Apple, whether it is the fact that they are part owned by MS, or they once filed the much hated (in the OSS communuty) "look and feel" lawsuit, or the quality of their GUI, or whatever, should remain seperate issues. IF they fix their license then Apple has done A Good Thing. If they don't, then we should consider it to be "not free software", but no worse than most shareware and as such, it should not get flamed, it should just get ignored.