What sorts of hoops do you have to jump through? The MH Mail Handler and CMU Common Lisp are two substantial works that I can think of that claim to be in the public domain. How can I tell if they really are. If I am the sole author of a piece of software and state at the top of every file that I have placed the software in the Public Domain, how can it not be? Can someone impose copyrights on me?
Several people have identified Every's
``the software that comes with a computer''
as telling, but a couple of others really caught my attention:
``it's a kernel with a shell''
Frankly I don't even accept the assertions by some that
system libraries are part of the operating system and I
certainly don't think of the shell (which one???) as part of
the OS.
Every may pooh pooh ``the more extreme Unix geeks'', but
libraries and applications are entities in their own rights
, independent of any operating system. Internet Explorer
is still Internet Explorer whether its running on Windows 98 or
Solaris. Same goes for bash or XEmacs. In fact, the X Window
System is still X whether it's running on Windows, Linux, OS/2, VMS,
or Lisp Machines.
``Unix . . . was free.''
Ummm, no. It wasn't. Now there are free unices, in 1982
there were not.
``Apple is being smart, and marketing the layers as separate
elements.''
Dude! Wake up! They are seperate elements. If they
were fundamental parts of what constitutes the operating system
``OS X'', then taking them away would leave you with something
less than the operating system.
I downloaded from ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.0.1/source/ early this afternoon (EDT) and then noticed that a new file was created (doctools) after I'd started the download.
See http://campbellcentral.org/rick/xfree86.log.html for details.
href='http://url' is not legal HTML. Check the spec. Netscape and Exploder may interpret a lot of near-but-not-quite HTML, but that doesn't make such code correct.
They want everyone to follow the standard, yet they purvey reference implementations that can be molded into whatever proprietary shape that the Microsofts or Netscapes of this world care to dream up. It comes to reason that a reference implementation of a standard should have a license that promotes compliance and prevents it from being used as a basis for proprietary extensions.
The fact that GCC is a truly hot compiler has certainly not forced C/C++ compiler vendors to adopt the open source model. Rather, they've gone off and done their own independent implementations.
On the other hand, the CMU Common Lisp project placed their code in the Public Domain. The result was that Lisp vendors moved quickly toward the emerging X3J13 standard. Far from hurting CMU Common Lisp, the fact that Lucid, Franz, and others were able to pick up truly free code without facing the restrictions of the GPL, helped to quickly solidify the standard on which it was based. Today, as the only real survivor, CMUCL continues to benefit from the popularity of Lisp development during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
While the restrictions of the GPL are intended to promote freedom, they are, in fact, restrictions on what you are allowed to do. Even restricting discussion to the Free Speech sense of Free Software, if GPL is free, BSD and PD are freer than free -- fewer restrictions on your freedom to do what you wish with the software.
If you believe that Free Software and Open Source are superior models, you have no need to fear the propietary model. The fact that some of the people who advance the ideas that you wish to promote through Free Software development are motivated by hopes of financial gain in no way detracts from your goals. It might even help to advance them.
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What sorts of hoops do you have to jump through? The MH Mail Handler and CMU Common Lisp are two substantial works that I can think of that claim to be in the public domain. How can I tell if they really are. If I am the sole author of a piece of software and state at the top of every file that I have placed the software in the Public Domain, how can it not be? Can someone impose copyrights on me?
Several people have identified Every's ``the software that comes with a computer'' as telling, but a couple of others really caught my attention:
``it's a kernel with a shell''
Frankly I don't even accept the assertions by some that system libraries are part of the operating system and I certainly don't think of the shell (which one???) as part of the OS.
Every may pooh pooh ``the more extreme Unix geeks'', but libraries and applications are entities in their own rights , independent of any operating system. Internet Explorer is still Internet Explorer whether its running on Windows 98 or Solaris. Same goes for bash or XEmacs. In fact, the X Window System is still X whether it's running on Windows, Linux, OS/2, VMS, or Lisp Machines.
``Unix . . . was free.''
Ummm, no. It wasn't. Now there are free unices, in 1982 there were not.
``Apple is being smart, and marketing the layers as separate elements.''
Dude! Wake up! They are seperate elements. If they were fundamental parts of what constitutes the operating system ``OS X'', then taking them away would leave you with something less than the operating system.
I downloaded from ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.0.1/source/
early this afternoon (EDT) and then noticed that a new file was created (doctools) after I'd started the download.
See http://campbellcentral.org/rick/xfree86.log.html for details.
href='http://url' is not legal HTML. Check the spec. Netscape and Exploder may interpret a lot of near-but-not-quite HTML, but that doesn't make such code correct.
The fact that GCC is a truly hot compiler has certainly not forced C/C++ compiler vendors to adopt the open source model. Rather, they've gone off and done their own independent implementations.
On the other hand, the CMU Common Lisp project placed their code in the Public Domain. The result was that Lisp vendors moved quickly toward the emerging X3J13 standard. Far from hurting CMU Common Lisp, the fact that Lucid, Franz, and others were able to pick up truly free code without facing the restrictions of the GPL, helped to quickly solidify the standard on which it was based. Today, as the only real survivor, CMUCL continues to benefit from the popularity of Lisp development during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
While the restrictions of the GPL are intended to promote freedom, they are, in fact, restrictions on what you are allowed to do. Even restricting discussion to the Free Speech sense of Free Software, if GPL is free, BSD and PD are freer than free -- fewer restrictions on your freedom to do what you wish with the software.
If you believe that Free Software and Open Source are superior models, you have no need to fear the propietary model. The fact that some of the people who advance the ideas that you wish to promote through Free Software development are motivated by hopes of financial gain in no way detracts from your goals. It might even help to advance them.