1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
The current person cannot remove or change the license. This does provide the greatest freedom for the next person to receive the code, because we are not asking any more of them than that they acknowledge that we wrote the code.
GPL = Kid who shares his toys but expects a return if the person enjoys it and makes it better. BSD = kid who gives his toys to the Goodwill and hopes that someone will find them useful, without demanding or expecting anything in return.
Wow, I can assume you must be an excellent kernel hacker to be saying this with such authority. From the way you stated that with such a forceful manner I could tell that you have written code for both systems and know the SMP code inside and out.
I bet you are subscribed to freebsd-current and freebsd-hackers and post to them often about how they could improve their code. With your vastly supierior knowledge of the way it is done. I know that you are only posting this because you have seen over and over again that your code patches, that would make FreeBSD (or any BSD for that matter) up to par with Linux, rejected by the FreeBSD team. And you are unwilling to split FreeBSD into another branch.
I bow before your holiness. Please teach me how to become as kernel literate as you.
Of course, in reality you probably couldn't tell SMP code from a device driver. So why don't you come back with actual knowledge of what you are talking about. Please note: as I am not deeply involved in either one of these kernel's SMP development I am not able to say which is better. Nor am I willing to make an ass of myself by trying.
Now, I am not suggesting that living on a very limited budget has to be bad. But I only have a microwave and a small fridge. I can't buy in bulk, and I can't cook most cheap foods. That leaves me with three main items on my dinner plate: Ramen noodles [@$0.1272 w/tax they can't be beat -- plus they make a pretty filling soup. One could be a whole meal. And at under 13 cents a meal they can't be beat;-) ], Frozen burritos [@$0.23214 w/tax, they are more expensive than Ramen but you can live off their greasy fat longer. 1 for dinner.], and college roundsteak (more commonly known as Bologna) [@$1.33984 per pound, it can seem expensive at first. Unless you know that there are about 20 slices to a pound making it about 6.6992 cents a slice. With an $0.74 loaf of bread, you suddenly have some variety.] As a little side note: condiments are for the rich and the weak. I bought a 64 cent large bottle of hot souce at the start of the semester and that is all I need.
This comes out to about 42 cents a day, assuming I eat all three. I usually only eat two of the three. Which would average to about 28.6 cents. You can figure it out yourself but that makes $2.00 - $3.01 a week. Well under eight dollars for two.
Yes, this is what I really eat most of the time. Although I went out and bought other stuff to live on recently. I spent just over $30.00 for a good 5 weeks worth of food. Although the stuff not on this list will go a lot sooner. But it is near the beginning of the semester, I can afford to splurge.
It will be noted that I did not include the price of beer in the cost above. It fluctuates way to much. I love good beer, so at the beginning of a semester I buy expensive stuff. But when the you only have $13.00 and two weeks to go, you will buy the cheapest beer you can find... or call in favors. {Will program for beer. Yoy can pay me later.} You have to be careful with that though. You are not the only broke person at the end of the semester.
Is anyone else having problems getting the Makefile to work? It might just be me. Well, that is one thing I need to learn anyway. Where is that man page?
Hmm. I think I am going to modify this and see how it works on the FreeBSD kernel. If I have some free time. I usually get about 5 hours of sleep a day as it is, usually less. I don't know if I could survive another pet project that will produce something I will never use. {Then again, I could make the file and print them on the school's printers. I will just have to run when the admin bursts out of the office wondering wtf is going on. Why is some one printing a 100+MB file?!?!?!}
I never said I agreed with him. But that is what he said he was doing. In his mind I guess he could stop the GPL with code like that. I don't like the GPL but I am not going to try and stop it was another license I don't like either.
"If you stuck 1,000,000 monkeys in a room for an infinite time -- they would produce all the works of Shakespear. They would also produce the GPL and the BSD license and all the arguments about them, and end up with more copies of each. Assuming they didn't start throwing their crap around and manage to beats themselves to death over the argument before the money in the corner writing Macbeth could finish."
Now! This I do agree with. Emacs is the only program you need; everything should run on top of that. "Linux supplies the device drivers. Emacs is my operating system." -- I have no clue where I saw this.
Seriously. The best part about Unix is not being stuck with one window manager. I have several on my machine and actually use a rarer one for daily use. But, KDE... well, I suppose; if it is the only thing you have, and it allows you to open four or five xterms, I could survive.
I don't see this at all. From what the article was talking about I got an image of a guy who didn't leave his office for several days. Okay, I guess that could look like the first part -- if he hasn't showered and breathes too deeply. From the article it appears he worked 72 hours to get his system up and running, and this wasn't wasted time he was spending for his own enjoyment. The article talks about how 2.4's support for large files could be used on the job. I read the same article as you, but ended up with a completely different picture in my head (not an uncommon occurance).
If playing guitar on the job counts as slacking, I will never be accused of it. I am about as musically inclined as I am inclined to run a marathon. I just would like to know where you got the impression that this guy was slacking. The article talks about how hackers don't have to worry about job security so they can afford to have a relaxed atmosphere; but, that is not really the same thing as never working. It is the fact that a hacker put in 80 hour work weeks that will make sure he gets a job no matter what kind of $h^t hits the fan.
Hackers, Himanen tells us, have a different relationship to money than normal folks do. They are not ruled by it; they don't do what they do out of a desire for money. They program because programming is intrinsically fascinating, and they share because sharing is righteous.
Although many people out there might call this bull-poop, the idea certainly is more than just existant. I would say it is almost prevelent. It is very easy to confuse a good programmer with a hacker until you add all the traits together and while this one is not required, I look for it more than the others. I can respect a person more who gets into computers for the love of it and not the money. Too many people here at my school just want to make ungodly salaries and think computers are the way to do it.
I never was this way (desiring large sums of money). I still am not this way. Even though I am not a poor programmer, I find it feels wrong to charge people for something I enjoy doing so much. Although I get beer out of it sometimes.;-)
I think this boils down to the one precept I base my life on. Sell what you need to survive (well maybe survive comfortably) and give the rest away. It is nice to spread $8.00 for two weeks of food, but you wouldn't want to do that once you are out of college.
"When you enjoy this as much as I do, accepting money has to be prostitution in 48 out of 50 states!" -- annonymous hacker after 27 hour coding session.
Hmm, maybe you missed this part. He knows what he is doing, and he is doing it on purpose to keep the GPL out of his code the same way the GPL tries to keep itself in other's code. I see no contradiction from the way he originally stated his belief.
Hmm, apparently I said communism was bad. Thing is I never said that anywhere. I said that Communism failed in use with politics. What most people fail to realize that just talking about communism falling does not mean you are saying it is bad, or even implying that it is one of the world's most hated political groups and disagreeing with me makes you one of them. I have always stood on the belief that communism had some great goals -- but they failed in practice. The same thing is true with the GPL. They have some great goals, but the method of enforcing those goals on others is destroying the freedom it was meant to preserve.
Let's see. Did anyone else miss the huge whole in this argument? I thought not. I will not point it out for the idiot^H^H^H^H^Hauthor. I am GIVING my code away, not my money. I don't know where you started thinking that open-source code was the same as cash. This statement is so stupid and illogical it is impossible to really argue against. It would be like sandblasting a saltine cracker.
Gee, apparently "Giving away" and "free" have different meanings for people who use the GPL. Here I was growing up believing that when you give something away you have no right to care what they do with it. As for it being used in some way that I would disagree with... lol they can do that with the GPL. What happens then? 95% of the people who use it will never look at the code anyway, and the 5% that do won't really be able to change anything.
Here we have the belief expressed again that some company including my code in a commercial release is going to make it unavailable. They can't change the license on the code I have written. So if they release my code they have to include the license with it. All I am telling them is that their added code does not have to be under my license. Please, a little common sense on both sides would save me from COBOL fingers.
I really was using this is in reference to the comment in the post I was responding to.
Most open source developers would rather not have their code end up in Windows.
This seems to be the one factor that holds all Linux users into one group. They hate Microsoft and anything that could help Microsoft will hinder the open-source movement. I am not saying I love Microsoft; but, I don't disagree with them. I know this is a very unpopular opinion here. They please most of the people most of the time. Good for them. And now with Linux and the *BSDs people who are not satisfied with Microsoft have somewhere to turn.
One thing I see repeated over and over in this discussion is the scare tactic the GPL people love so much. "Some evil monopoly is going to take your source and sell it, and it will no longer be free." Yeah, they throw other details in there, but that is what it boils down to. Even though I said it before this bears repeating. Your code will always be free; what you wrote will always be out there. That is like saying if I burn my copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide, I am destroying all the work that Douglas Adams did and no one else will ever be able to enjoy it.
The funniest comment that was completely out there was the one about the whores.
So next time someone takes your money and does something with it you "didn't" will you think "gee i'm glad they had the resources to take my money and invest in crackwhores for me"
Hmm, I could have sworn I was giving them code, not money.
free code should stay free not free as in re-commented, patented and regurgitated. If at any point the code becomes unavalible I'd consider that not free
Here it is: The belief that my code will become unavailable because someone else is using it.
But back on topic. I know many people who love Unix and use Linux -- it is just that most of them love Linux more due to their hatred of Bill Gates. I am not saying that Linux is wrong, bad, or anything else. I am saying that hating Microsoft is a bad reason to defend a license.
Saying the BSD licence is more free than the GPL is like saying that a state without laws against kidnapping is more free than a state that
does have them.
That doesn't even make sense. It would be better put to say that the BSD is more free than the GPL the same way a state without taxes is more free than a state with taxes. With BSD you don't have to pay the 'state' anything. But with the GPL you are forced to pay the 'state' with whatever additions you add to its code.
Wow, you sure did blow away everything I said with that. How did I miss that huge blindspot in my logic? Oh, wait. I didn't.
Yes, I know they are able to just sell your code without changing anything. But, they will almost never succeed at locking everyone into using their code that way. Because people will still be able to get yours for free. Remember, you have chosen what gets done with the code you wrote. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will change that unless you do it yourself (and even then -- good luck getting that opensource code locked down).
If they spend the money on marketing, I wish them all the returns in the world. They are putting something into it that I didn't and getting something out of it; which I should have no right to try and claim. I gave them my code to do with as they wanted. People can do that under the GPL just as well. I don't see a part saying anything about you seeing any of that money. Just the opposite in fact. Linux distros are the perfect picture of this. They don't change anything but they resell the programs. It doesn't profit the author any. He may get some code back later, but the same thing happens in the BSD world... we just don't force people to send the code to us. If they want their code to go far, they will try and get it added to the main base -- or distribute it themselves. It doesn't matter.
If it wasn't for the GPL "... nobody would even know free software existed." lol, that is a good one. I don't even need to respond to that. Free software has existed as long as computers have been around. No one needs the press to tell them it exists to justify its existence.
And since the professor is one of the contributors under the GPL, we would have to get him to sign an agreement to release the code under any other license -- since personally we would not own all the rights to it.
Sorry to repeat that, it was in a message above that might not have been up when you posted this. But this is the reason why it could not be done. I would have to get every contributor's agreement to release it under the new license. Since he would not agree to that I am stuck. A better question I brought up to him was, "If you own some rights to the code, and you really want it under GPL, why can't you take our BSD'd code and release it under the GPL?" He would have the right to do that. He is the 'contractor' and he could change it if he felt it was nessessary to do so. But he refused to answer this. The point was made pretty clear by his actions: This is only going to be done my way! And if you won't do it my way... you will do it my way.
But you were almost right about that. As the _sole_ copyright holder you withhold the right to release it under any license you want, and as many as you want. But if you are not the sole copyright holder you must have permission from all the others before you do that.
Hmm, maybe you are asking in the wrong areas. Here is a quote from a mailing list I subscribe to for freebsd. Note: I am using this without the author's permission, and I will leave his name out to protect him. If you wish to see this message for yourself, find an archive of freebsd-hackers -- it was posted on 01/25/2001.
"wow can't belive the author of a great
book and a core team member answered my question in less than an hour, try
getting that from another OS:-) "
In all seriousness. Try asking at freebsd-questions. And if you don't get a response right away, you might have to try again in a day or two. The list gets around 500 posts a day, not all get caught the first time. [I am not telling you to post your message 50 times so it gets seen, post it once, and if you get no response in a day or two. Try again -- with a note attached explaining you know this is the second time. But, you thought it might have been missed.]
Sounds like you had a bad experience with authority, and that colored your impressions.
Hardly, why would I have been asking if I didn't already feel that way. My impressions were already "colored". My point with repeating this story, was that most GPL people are like this. And the GPL itself has the same attitude. You WILL do it our way, or we will find a way to FORCE you to comply. Trying to make me look like a childish person throwing a mindless tantrum is a nice tactic -- but it doesn't work in civilized society.
Is there a reason why you thought you'd have any input as to liscensing a class assignment? You don't think you owned it, did you?
Hmm, maybe you don't comprehend the level of assignment. I am not in high school where you write contrite little programs to calculate the sum of two integers or something like that. Yes, we have homework assignments like that -- but those were not the issue. The issue was the project at the end. My teacher acted like he was doing the class a favor by allowing us to GPL our code, because we could get it back later. He claimed that the major benefit of the GPL is that it would allow us to share our code. But he refused to allow the BSD, even though it met one of his criteria and we were willing to waive the right to see our code ever again. Why did we want that? Because these projects could evolve into a commercial and/or open-source project later on down the road. And if anything was GPL'd the whole code had to be. We did not want to have to rewrite all the code over again to release it under a license that we approved of. And since the professor is one of the contributors under the GPL, we would have to get him to sign an agreement to release the code under any other license -- since personally we would not own all the rights to it. When he realised how much he stood to lose from this, he backed himself into a corner and would not allow furthur discussion. The reason we went to higher ups.
You confuse me because while a student (for material submitted as homework) you don't own that code.
Hmm, a rather large and technical issue here. Does the code fall into the ownership of the teacher as a work under contract. From what I know, the courts have decided to allow each university the right to specify this. At my school, yes. Not all schools are like this, and I was fully within the bounds of proper conduct to try and find out. Making a blanket statement like you did about students not owning their code is always false. Some places specifically state that a student has full ownership and rights to all code the write.
Rather as if I tried to argue with Bill Gates about how to liscense windows.
But, as a proponent of the GPL you have. You have told Gates that if he uses any of your code, he HAS to license his program (Windows) your way, or not sell it at all.
I understand that you wish to discredit any sign of intelligable thinking that disagrees with your own. But, you don't have to be so blatent. Next time, rather than attacking the messenger -- try and make a point. Most people would appreciate it more.
just look at the kerberos fiasco. MS 'embraced and extended' kerberos, actually causing interoperability with UNIX systems to not work. Can you honestly tell me you would condone that as a BSD developer?
Yes, I can. That is what free includes; the right to f#$% up a good thing. I don't think that Microsoft messing up a piece of code has anything to do with the license. I fully condone the right for people to use my code in whatever way they want. If they want to print it out and wipe their a$$ with it, good for them. I hope it makes them happy. And if they do, I sure as hell don't want a copy with any of the added sh^t on it.
Sorry, I forgot to change the brackets around the email. This is what the BEER-WARE License looks like.
"THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
<author@domain.xxx> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return. Authors Name
I also don't want to see someone else taking my work, "embracing and extending" upon it, and then profiting off a piece of software that I originally intended to be free for everyone. The GPL guarantees that what I intended to be free will stay free.
Don't you see? The code you have written and intended to be free is still free! Nothing changed that. If they have added, or improved your code, so much -- they should have the right to do what they wish with that code. They are only benefiting from their work. They can never really benefit from yours. Why? It may appear like they are benefiting from the work you have done, but they are not. They can never force people to buy their code on the merits of your code alone. Because the people will just go out and use your code; if they don't want the additional stuff.* What gives you the right to tell them what they can or can't do with the code they wrote? In a truely free society, nothing.
I can see where the GPL people come from with their ideas. And the ideas are noble. But you are going about it in the wrong way. Be honest with yourself and read the GPL (I have a nice highlighted hard copy for when I discuss these issues). Ask yourself if I have a point. If I do have a point, think about what you are doing when you GPL a piece of code. I am not going to tell you that you have to switch or you are anti-anything. I will just ask you to be honest with yourself.
Personally, I used to think the GPL was the only way to go. I didn't know much about other licenses out there, at the time, and I would have probably argued the same way as many of you do. But, over time, I started to question the ethics of forcing someone to chose one license over another and that in itself is so against freedom that I had to change my view. I am not saying the BSD license in the best [although it is my favorite]. You might want to release code under the Beer-Ware license.** I do this with code I write for people on campus and it pays off very well.
*Yes, I know they are able to just sell your code without changing anything. But, they will almost never succeed at locking everyone into using their code that way. Because people will still be able to get yours for free. Remember, you have chosen what gets done with the code you wrote. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will change that unless you do it yourself (and even then -- good luck getting that opensource code locked down).
**Note: I did not write this, I just like using it.
"THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42): wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return. Authors Name
lol, yeah. I have no idea where that came from. I guess that is why it is called a rant. I was trying so hard to stay on topic too. Oh well, I will just have to try better next time.
I should be beaten with a stick until I confess my miserable karma hoarding ways.;-)
Really, I don't care about the karma; I just like to voice my opinion.
Most open source developers would rather not have their code end up in Windows.
Being an open-source developer myself, I would personally never release any of my code under the GPL. And I encourage all the coders I talk with to do the same. And once they see the reasoning behind why, most will switch. They honestly want to give their code away for others to use as they see fit. You are not giving your code away if you are requiring something back.
I tried to use the BSD license in a class where the teacher was pro-GPL and he refused to agree. Although we discussed it at great length. It turns out that at my college any professor has the right to determine the license for all code his class produces. But, even if the school had not been on his side the GPL would have allowed him to win. All he had to do was require that a GPL'd base class be included in all assignments, and everything would be forced under the GPL! He told me he was going to do this, no matter what verdict he school returned. This is just one of the reasons I hate the GPL.
I am sorry, but your little disclaimer about trying not to troll is not going to change what you said into anything less offensive to those who have been forced into submission by that filthy beast of a license! If the cost of giving my code away means it goes to Windows. Great! This again proves my favorite saying, "Those who hate Windows use Linux; those who love Unix use FreeBSD."
If the GPL becomes as prominent as you think it will be, there will be a lot of excellent coders who will take up other hobbies where freedom is maintained. But it won't happen. Communism failed in use with politics it will fail in use with code developing as well. FreeBSD will remain 'Free' and so will all the code I, and those who know the truth about giving, produce.
I really can't tell if this person is joking or not. Could there honestly be people out there who think like this?
How can anyone say FreeBSD is faster than Linux. It just staggers the imagination. Linus writes code for Linux, not FreeBSD.
This is what gives it away as flamebait. No one could be that blind to the obvious. Of course, that whole part about the GPL being free was funny too. But I won't get into the GPL vs BSD license debate tonight.
As he/she said:
Bah! Dont believe everything you read! Think for yourselves.
Slashdot Mirror
The current person cannot remove or change the license. This does provide the greatest freedom for the next person to receive the code, because we are not asking any more of them than that they acknowledge that we wrote the code.
GPL = Kid who shares his toys but expects a return if the person enjoys it and makes it better. BSD = kid who gives his toys to the Goodwill and hopes that someone will find them useful, without demanding or expecting anything in return.
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
I bet you are subscribed to freebsd-current and freebsd-hackers and post to them often about how they could improve their code. With your vastly supierior knowledge of the way it is done. I know that you are only posting this because you have seen over and over again that your code patches, that would make FreeBSD (or any BSD for that matter) up to par with Linux, rejected by the FreeBSD team. And you are unwilling to split FreeBSD into another branch.
I bow before your holiness. Please teach me how to become as kernel literate as you.
Of course, in reality you probably couldn't tell SMP code from a device driver. So why don't you come back with actual knowledge of what you are talking about. Please note: as I am not deeply involved in either one of these kernel's SMP development I am not able to say which is better. Nor am I willing to make an ass of myself by trying.
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
This comes out to about 42 cents a day, assuming I eat all three. I usually only eat two of the three. Which would average to about 28.6 cents. You can figure it out yourself but that makes $2.00 - $3.01 a week. Well under eight dollars for two.
Yes, this is what I really eat most of the time. Although I went out and bought other stuff to live on recently. I spent just over $30.00 for a good 5 weeks worth of food. Although the stuff not on this list will go a lot sooner. But it is near the beginning of the semester, I can afford to splurge.
It will be noted that I did not include the price of beer in the cost above. It fluctuates way to much. I love good beer, so at the beginning of a semester I buy expensive stuff. But when the you only have $13.00 and two weeks to go, you will buy the cheapest beer you can find... or call in favors. {Will program for beer. Yoy can pay me later.} You have to be careful with that though. You are not the only broke person at the end of the semester.
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
Hmm. I think I am going to modify this and see how it works on the FreeBSD kernel. If I have some free time. I usually get about 5 hours of sleep a day as it is, usually less. I don't know if I could survive another pet project that will produce something I will never use.
{Then again, I could make the file and print them on the school's printers. I will just have to run when the admin bursts out of the office wondering wtf is going on. Why is some one printing a 100+MB file?!?!?!}
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
"If you stuck 1,000,000 monkeys in a room for an infinite time -- they would produce all the works of Shakespear. They would also produce the GPL and the BSD license and all the arguments about them, and end up with more copies of each. Assuming they didn't start throwing their crap around and manage to beats themselves to death over the argument before the money in the corner writing Macbeth could finish."
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
Seriously. The best part about Unix is not being stuck with one window manager. I have several on my machine and actually use a rarer one for daily use. But, KDE... well, I suppose; if it is the only thing you have, and it allows you to open four or five xterms, I could survive.
I'm actually a huge VI fan, not an emacs one.
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
If playing guitar on the job counts as slacking, I will never be accused of it. I am about as musically inclined as I am inclined to run a marathon. I just would like to know where you got the impression that this guy was slacking. The article talks about how hackers don't have to worry about job security so they can afford to have a relaxed atmosphere; but, that is not really the same thing as never working. It is the fact that a hacker put in 80 hour work weeks that will make sure he gets a job no matter what kind of $h^t hits the fan.
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
Although many people out there might call this bull-poop, the idea certainly is more than just existant. I would say it is almost prevelent. It is very easy to confuse a good programmer with a hacker until you add all the traits together and while this one is not required, I look for it more than the others. I can respect a person more who gets into computers for the love of it and not the money. Too many people here at my school just want to make ungodly salaries and think computers are the way to do it.
I never was this way (desiring large sums of money). I still am not this way. Even though I am not a poor programmer, I find it feels wrong to charge people for something I enjoy doing so much. Although I get beer out of it sometimes. ;-)
I think this boils down to the one precept I base my life on. Sell what you need to survive (well maybe survive comfortably) and give the rest away. It is nice to spread $8.00 for two weeks of food, but you wouldn't want to do that once you are out of college.
"When you enjoy this as much as I do, accepting money has to be prostitution in 48 out of 50 states!" -- annonymous hacker after 27 hour coding session.
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
Hmm, maybe you missed this part. He knows what he is doing, and he is doing it on purpose to keep the GPL out of his code the same way the GPL tries to keep itself in other's code. I see no contradiction from the way he originally stated his belief.
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
Here we have the belief expressed again that some company including my code in a commercial release is going to make it unavailable. They can't change the license on the code I have written. So if they release my code they have to include the license with it. All I am telling them is that their added code does not have to be under my license. Please, a little common sense on both sides would save me from COBOL fingers.
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
Most open source developers would rather not have their code end up in Windows.
This seems to be the one factor that holds all Linux users into one group. They hate Microsoft and anything that could help Microsoft will hinder the open-source movement. I am not saying I love Microsoft; but, I don't disagree with them. I know this is a very unpopular opinion here. They please most of the people most of the time. Good for them. And now with Linux and the *BSDs people who are not satisfied with Microsoft have somewhere to turn.
One thing I see repeated over and over in this discussion is the scare tactic the GPL people love so much. "Some evil monopoly is going to take your source and sell it, and it will no longer be free." Yeah, they throw other details in there, but that is what it boils down to. Even though I said it before this bears repeating. Your code will always be free; what you wrote will always be out there. That is like saying if I burn my copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide, I am destroying all the work that Douglas Adams did and no one else will ever be able to enjoy it.
The funniest comment that was completely out there was the one about the whores.
So next time someone takes your money and does something with it you "didn't" will you think "gee i'm glad they had the resources to take my money and invest in crackwhores for me"
Hmm, I could have sworn I was giving them code, not money.
free code should stay free not free as in re-commented, patented and regurgitated. If at any point the code becomes unavalible I'd consider that not free
Here it is: The belief that my code will become unavailable because someone else is using it.
But back on topic. I know many people who love Unix and use Linux -- it is just that most of them love Linux more due to their hatred of Bill Gates. I am not saying that Linux is wrong, bad, or anything else. I am saying that hating Microsoft is a bad reason to defend a license.
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
since personally we would not own all the rights to it
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
That doesn't even make sense. It would be better put to say that the BSD is more free than the GPL the same way a state without taxes is more free than a state with taxes. With BSD you don't have to pay the 'state' anything. But with the GPL you are forced to pay the 'state' with whatever additions you add to its code.
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
Wow, you sure did blow away everything I said with that. How did I miss that huge blindspot in my logic? Oh, wait. I didn't.
Yes, I know they are able to just sell your code without changing anything. But, they will almost never succeed at locking everyone into using their code that way. Because people will still be able to get yours for free. Remember, you have chosen what gets done with the code you wrote. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will change that unless you do it yourself (and even then -- good luck getting that opensource code locked down).
If they spend the money on marketing, I wish them all the returns in the world. They are putting something into it that I didn't and getting something out of it; which I should have no right to try and claim. I gave them my code to do with as they wanted. People can do that under the GPL just as well. I don't see a part saying anything about you seeing any of that money. Just the opposite in fact. Linux distros are the perfect picture of this. They don't change anything but they resell the programs. It doesn't profit the author any. He may get some code back later, but the same thing happens in the BSD world... we just don't force people to send the code to us. If they want their code to go far, they will try and get it added to the main base -- or distribute it themselves. It doesn't matter.
If it wasn't for the GPL "... nobody would even know free software existed." lol, that is a good one. I don't even need to respond to that. Free software has existed as long as computers have been around. No one needs the press to tell them it exists to justify its existence.
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
Sorry to repeat that, it was in a message above that might not have been up when you posted this. But this is the reason why it could not be done. I would have to get every contributor's agreement to release it under the new license. Since he would not agree to that I am stuck. A better question I brought up to him was, "If you own some rights to the code, and you really want it under GPL, why can't you take our BSD'd code and release it under the GPL?" He would have the right to do that. He is the 'contractor' and he could change it if he felt it was nessessary to do so. But he refused to answer this. The point was made pretty clear by his actions: This is only going to be done my way! And if you won't do it my way... you will do it my way.
But you were almost right about that. As the _sole_ copyright holder you withhold the right to release it under any license you want, and as many as you want. But if you are not the sole copyright holder you must have permission from all the others before you do that.
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
"wow can't belive the author of a great book and a core team member answered my question in less than an hour, try getting that from another OS :-) "
In all seriousness. Try asking at freebsd-questions. And if you don't get a response right away, you might have to try again in a day or two. The list gets around 500 posts a day, not all get caught the first time. [I am not telling you to post your message 50 times so it gets seen, post it once, and if you get no response in a day or two. Try again -- with a note attached explaining you know this is the second time. But, you thought it might have been missed.]
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
Hardly, why would I have been asking if I didn't already feel that way. My impressions were already "colored". My point with repeating this story, was that most GPL people are like this. And the GPL itself has the same attitude. You WILL do it our way, or we will find a way to FORCE you to comply. Trying to make me look like a childish person throwing a mindless tantrum is a nice tactic -- but it doesn't work in civilized society.
Is there a reason why you thought you'd have any input as to liscensing a class assignment? You don't think you owned it, did you?
Hmm, maybe you don't comprehend the level of assignment. I am not in high school where you write contrite little programs to calculate the sum of two integers or something like that. Yes, we have homework assignments like that -- but those were not the issue. The issue was the project at the end. My teacher acted like he was doing the class a favor by allowing us to GPL our code, because we could get it back later. He claimed that the major benefit of the GPL is that it would allow us to share our code. But he refused to allow the BSD, even though it met one of his criteria and we were willing to waive the right to see our code ever again. Why did we want that? Because these projects could evolve into a commercial and/or open-source project later on down the road. And if anything was GPL'd the whole code had to be. We did not want to have to rewrite all the code over again to release it under a license that we approved of. And since the professor is one of the contributors under the GPL, we would have to get him to sign an agreement to release the code under any other license -- since personally we would not own all the rights to it. When he realised how much he stood to lose from this, he backed himself into a corner and would not allow furthur discussion. The reason we went to higher ups.
You confuse me because while a student (for material submitted as homework) you don't own that code.
Hmm, a rather large and technical issue here. Does the code fall into the ownership of the teacher as a work under contract. From what I know, the courts have decided to allow each university the right to specify this. At my school, yes. Not all schools are like this, and I was fully within the bounds of proper conduct to try and find out. Making a blanket statement like you did about students not owning their code is always false. Some places specifically state that a student has full ownership and rights to all code the write.
Rather as if I tried to argue with Bill Gates about how to liscense windows.
But, as a proponent of the GPL you have. You have told Gates that if he uses any of your code, he HAS to license his program (Windows) your way, or not sell it at all.
I understand that you wish to discredit any sign of intelligable thinking that disagrees with your own. But, you don't have to be so blatent. Next time, rather than attacking the messenger -- try and make a point. Most people would appreciate it more.
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
Yes, I can. That is what free includes; the right to f#$% up a good thing. I don't think that Microsoft messing up a piece of code has anything to do with the license. I fully condone the right for people to use my code in whatever way they want. If they want to print it out and wipe their a$$ with it, good for them. I hope it makes them happy. And if they do, I sure as hell don't want a copy with any of the added sh^t on it.
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
"THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
<author@domain.xxx> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return. Authors Name
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
Don't you see? The code you have written and intended to be free is still free! Nothing changed that. If they have added, or improved your code, so much -- they should have the right to do what they wish with that code. They are only benefiting from their work. They can never really benefit from yours. Why? It may appear like they are benefiting from the work you have done, but they are not. They can never force people to buy their code on the merits of your code alone. Because the people will just go out and use your code; if they don't want the additional stuff.* What gives you the right to tell them what they can or can't do with the code they wrote? In a truely free society, nothing.
I can see where the GPL people come from with their ideas. And the ideas are noble. But you are going about it in the wrong way. Be honest with yourself and read the GPL (I have a nice highlighted hard copy for when I discuss these issues). Ask yourself if I have a point. If I do have a point, think about what you are doing when you GPL a piece of code. I am not going to tell you that you have to switch or you are anti-anything. I will just ask you to be honest with yourself.
Personally, I used to think the GPL was the only way to go. I didn't know much about other licenses out there, at the time, and I would have probably argued the same way as many of you do. But, over time, I started to question the ethics of forcing someone to chose one license over another and that in itself is so against freedom that I had to change my view. I am not saying the BSD license in the best [although it is my favorite]. You might want to release code under the Beer-Ware license.** I do this with code I write for people on campus and it pays off very well.
*Yes, I know they are able to just sell your code without changing anything. But, they will almost never succeed at locking everyone into using their code that way. Because people will still be able to get yours for free. Remember, you have chosen what gets done with the code you wrote. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will change that unless you do it yourself (and even then -- good luck getting that opensource code locked down).
**Note: I did not write this, I just like using it.
"THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return. Authors Name
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
I should be beaten with a stick until I confess my miserable karma hoarding ways. ;-)
Really, I don't care about the karma; I just like to voice my opinion.
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
Most open source developers would rather not have their code end up in Windows.
Being an open-source developer myself, I would personally never release any of my code under the GPL. And I encourage all the coders I talk with to do the same. And once they see the reasoning behind why, most will switch. They honestly want to give their code away for others to use as they see fit. You are not giving your code away if you are requiring something back.
I tried to use the BSD license in a class where the teacher was pro-GPL and he refused to agree. Although we discussed it at great length. It turns out that at my college any professor has the right to determine the license for all code his class produces. But, even if the school had not been on his side the GPL would have allowed him to win. All he had to do was require that a GPL'd base class be included in all assignments, and everything would be forced under the GPL! He told me he was going to do this, no matter what verdict he school returned. This is just one of the reasons I hate the GPL.
I am sorry, but your little disclaimer about trying not to troll is not going to change what you said into anything less offensive to those who have been forced into submission by that filthy beast of a license! If the cost of giving my code away means it goes to Windows. Great! This again proves my favorite saying, "Those who hate Windows use Linux; those who love Unix use FreeBSD."
If the GPL becomes as prominent as you think it will be, there will be a lot of excellent coders who will take up other hobbies where freedom is maintained. But it won't happen. Communism failed in use with politics it will fail in use with code developing as well. FreeBSD will remain 'Free' and so will all the code I, and those who know the truth about giving, produce.
</rant>
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
How can anyone say FreeBSD is faster than Linux. It just staggers the imagination. Linus writes code for Linux, not FreeBSD.
This is what gives it away as flamebait. No one could be that blind to the obvious. Of course, that whole part about the GPL being free was funny too. But I won't get into the GPL vs BSD license debate tonight.
As he/she said:
Bah! Dont believe everything you read! Think for yourselves.
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,