[Discuss] OSS licenses (was Home NAS redux)

[blu at nedharvey.com (Edward Ned Harvey (blu))]

> From: Mark Woodward [mailto:markw at mohawksoft.com]
> 
> Think about what happened to Kerberos under the MIT license. You always
> ignore this point in your replies and this is a fundamental point in the
> debate.

Some people wrote some software and made it available for free.  Some other people ran with it, and made a ton of money off it.  How is that any different from Apple, RedHat, Novell, or Oracle?  Neither the CDDL, BSD, or GPL forces these guys to pay down to the copyright holder either.

What did MS do?  Compile it into a binary mixed with proprietary code.  What do all these other guys do?  Other stuff.  The file boundary is meaningless and not effective at preventing redistribution as part of a larger work.

You haven't said anything about whether or not you believe a virtual appliance counts as a larger work.


> You acquired free software. You have the freedom to do so. You modify
> the free software. You have the freedom to do so. What gives you the
> moral or ethical right to create a non-free product with that free
> software you got for free? Freedom to deny freedom is not a freedom.

You're right about one thing.  I am intentionally ignoring one thing you keep saying.  In your quote above, you magically make a leap from something normal to "freedom to deny freedom."

Look, if I release something under MIT license, nobody comes to my door and breaks it down and enslaves me coding for their benefit.  Nobody has denied my freedom.

"Freedom to deny freedom" is a phrase used to describe the "right" to own slaves.  It is 100% non-applicable to anything in this entire discussion.