Re: GPL traitor !

[Alan Mackenzie]

In gnu.misc.discuss Rjack <user@example.net> wrote:
> Matt Assay of C-Net fame and one of cyberworld's *biggest* supporters
> of the GPL is bailing out like he's Arlen Specter's campaign manager:

Oh, you have a wonderful way of dramatising things, RJ!

> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10229817-16.html
> "I have spent years advocating the GNU General Public License as the
> optimal open-source license for commercial open source. Roughly nine
> years after I first became a fan of the GPL, I think I've been wrong.

It seems Matt has long misunderstood the GPL.  It was never intended to
be optimal for "commercial open source", and most thinking people,
including RMS, would agree that the Apache license is indeed better for
this purpose.

But he seems not to have grasped that maximising adoption of software
isn't a prime object of the GPL any more than it is of Microsoft - for
both, it is a means to their respective ends. 

> My admiration for the GPL mostly stemmed from its ability to mimic,
> but then invert, proprietary licensing. The GPL is like opening a
> cannister of radioactive waste: while your competitors can touch it,
> you're dead certain that they won't."

That's just FUD.

> He. He.

As usual, you've misunderstood something.  There's no treachery involved
here, since Matt Assay never swore an oath of allegiance, literal or
figurative, to the GPL or the principles behind it.

Rather it seems he's at long last grasped the differences between free
software and open source.

> Sincerely,
> Rjack :)

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).