Re: Emacs repository benchmark: bzr and git

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Randall Schwartz writes:

 > > The GNU Project's contribution was a legally enforcable license
 > > to ensure share-and-share-alike for authors who chose to use the
 > > legal system to enforce their politics.  This was definitely an
 > > important contribution at the time, but it wasn't the thing that
 > > "started free software".

I basically agree, but one quibble.  My understanding is that a
second, equally important, contribution was the very idea of a free
software distribution (ie, public release of a large suite of free
software, preferably a full operating system).  I'm fairly sure that
the BSD NET/1 release, and the proposal to greatly expand the
distribution as NET/2, was triggered by hearing about GNU.  Sort of a
"hey, that's it!  That's what we've wanted to do all along!"

Óscar Fuentes replies:

 > Free Software, ("Free" in the GNU sense), is nothing without a
 > legally enforceable license that protects its freedom. Maybe you
 > are talking about what later was known as Open Source? (BSD
 > license, etc).

Those *are* legally enforceable licenses that protect the licensed
software's freedom.  Every line of the covered work is fully free, in
perpetuity, as long as a single copy under that license is publicly
available.

Second, please be careful to distinguish between "free software" as
software (which is what Randall was talking about, and is essentially
identical to open source software as defined in the Open Source
Definition), and the "Free Software Movement", which is a political
movement.  Any software licensed under a free software license is free
software, regardless of the political opinions of the licensor.

BTW, the Open Source movement is quite hospitable to people whose
primary goal is liberty (eg, the "Quaker faction").  You just have to
believe in liberty enough that you can cooperate happily with the
"economists" who see liberty as instrumental to productivity, rather
than the other way around.