First open source OS

[rlk at alum.mit.edu (Robert L Krawitz)]

   From: Charles Peterman <peterman at eecs.tufts.edu>
   Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 15:49:18 -0500 (EST)

   Please give consideration to the external realities of producing
   software in this less than perfect world before you needlessly
   vilify the BSD license.  Without it, some of us who like to write
   software for a living would be working, in one guise or another,
   for Microsoft.  For the majority of software writers out there,
   Linux doesn't present enough commercial opportunity to pay the
   bills.  Dig?

Not really, because unless you're developing kernel extensions (which
relatively few people do), the licensing doesn't matter one bit.  The
core system libraries (glibc) are LGPL, so you can link non-free
applications against them, and Linus has made it quite clear (and
nobody has come along to challenge it) that simply making system calls
does not make for a derivative work.

There are advantages and disadvantages either way, and it depends upon
what your goals are and what you're doing.  Note that even RMS agrees
with (indeed, he advocated) applying a BSD-type license to Ogg Vorbis,
because the harm that would come from proprietary applications based
on it is less than the harm from standardizing on MP3.  GPL'ing libc
would accomplish nothing of any use.

I see the GPL as the "strong IP" implementation in the free source
world.  It offers strong protection of IP, in the sense of keeping it
free.  Most of what I write in the way of free software I put under
the GPL, because as long as there's going to be copyright, and
restrictive IP, I might as well ensure that I'm helping to create a
strong free preserve.  Other people see the issue differently, and so
come to a different conclusion.

-- 
Robert Krawitz <rlk at alum.mit.edu>      http://www.tiac.net/users/rlk/

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf at uunet.uu.net
Project lead for Gimp Print/stp --  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton