Re: [avr-chat] µC/avr crypto lib

[David Kelly]

On Jul 24, 2008, at 4:54 PM, Bob Blick wrote:
> I think that is just one point of view. Part of the spirit of GPL is  
> to
> further public development. That is why code I release to the public  
> is
> released under GPL. I want improvements to it done by others available
> to the public.

The sprit of GPL is that Richard Stallman saw the Lisp environment he  
worked on claimed by a financial backer and turned into a successful  
commercial product and locked him out of all the source, even the  
parts he had written. The result was an extreme knee-jerk reaction to  
the left known as GPL.

The BSD license is more open and more free specifically because you  
may use the code for anything in any way other than to claim it as  
your original work. The BSD license does not allow for itself to be  
revoked. Once BSD-licensed code is out in the wild it can never be  
pulled back. That is exactly the problem Richard Stallman overreacted  
to in creating GPL.

There is nothing about the BSD license which hinders public development.

We already see Daniel Otte not only wants GPL to require users to  
contribute fixes and enhancements back, but that he wants to own those  
changes so that he can sell licenses outside of GPL. This is called,  
"Having your cake and eating it too." That means everyone else has to  
abide by GPL, but he is above it.

Haven't heard of any justification as to why Daniel's crypto library  
is better than the totally free pubic domain TomCrypt. Or the Lesser- 
GPL genuine FSF GNU libgcrypt: http://directory.fsf.org/project/libgcrypt/

The reason the BSD license works is that businesses and entrepreneurs  
can postpone their decision as to whether any changes they have made  
are a competitive advantage, or just a nuisance to maintain. And  
meanwhile protect their original work.

As for GPL, link it into proprietary code and immediately one loses  
one's rights to the proprietary code. Its not just the library that is  
GPL but the entire project. LGPL was created in recognition of this,  
and to emphasize that property of GPL. LGPL is not a copyright virus,  
but GPL is.

Apple lifted many BSD parts of FreeBSD for MacOS X. Apple has  
contributed huge amounts of code and work back into BSD. What I  
happened to see the most was in NFS support and bug fixes.

--
David Kelly N4HHE, address@hidden
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Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.