Re: Free software is dead.

[Rjack]

Rui Maciel wrote:
> Rjack wrote:
>
> > Why do you want to take control of another author's BSD licensed 
> > code? The BSD author has already freely offered it to anyone who 
> > chooses to use it. Only anti-capitalist GPL control freaks want 
> > to control other author's source code.
>
> The funny thing is that quite a few companies enjoy picking up 
> BSD-licensed software, include it in their software and proceed to 
> act as if it was written by the company itself.

That's the intent of the BSD license -- use it as you wish or maybe
don't use it at all -- it's your choice. That's *real* freedom.

> That is also the case with GPL software but thankfully, as soon as 
> the jig is up, the courts quickly force the offending companies to 
> respect their copyright agreement.

Not in U.S. jurisdictions.

FACT: No claim for any relief requested by a GPL license violation
plaintiff has ever been granted by a United States Federal Court. All
GPL complaints have been voluntarily withdrawn long before a judge
could ever read a single word of the license.

The point of Matt Assay's CNET article:

Free software is dead. Long live open source
http://news.cnet.com/openroad/

is that companies are abandoning thoughts of incorporating GPL
licensed code in their products.

The GPL's failure is the fanatic desire of its authors to control
other folk's contributions. The goal of open source software is not to
promote an anti-capitalist, religious experience with a control freak
like Richard Stallman. The goal of open source software is to write
code that others can freely inspect, learn from, contribute to and use
as they wish if they so desire.

The idiotic attempt by Richard Stallman to re-define the meaning of
the word "free" is an abject failure.

Sincerely,
Rjack




















> So no, you got it backwards.
>
>
> Rui Maciel