[Sussex] Ok the gauntlets on the floor!

[Geoff Teale]

Steve Dobson wrote:

>AFAIK the "software communism" is M$ FUD (if not M$ then someone trying
>to stop Open/Free Software).  It amazes me that there are still many
>Americans that think that communism is akin to devil worship.
>  
>
Goddam pinko, commy bar stewards....

... actually it's important to note that Open Source and Free Software 
is not an exclusively left wing thing.  Whilst RMS may well be a 
hippy-chickey-flakey-shakey-fun-in-the-sun-braless-wonder (a pint to the 
first person who gets that reference), Eric S. Raymond is a pro-gun, 
confederate flag waving son-of-a-republican ;-)

I'm also aware of at least one fasc^H^H^H^H conservative voter on this 
list ;-)

>As for the "software cancer" our friends over in *BSD land do see the
>GPL as a virus.  And they do have a point.  The GPL requires that any
>derived work is also GPLed - thus "cancer".
>
>The BSD license places no such restriction on derived works.  You can 
>take the BSD source, compile it (changing the name from "BSD" to
>"BJOS" [1] but only if you want) and sell it on.  So in this sense the
>BSD is more "free" than the GPL.
>  
>
BSD people often argue that their license is more free than the GPL.  In 
a sense they are right - however, the GNU project started out on a 
similar footing and only added restrictions that forced people to play 
fair when RMS himself was threatened with a cease and desist order for 
working on his own code by a company that had bought the rights to a 
work derived from that code.  Specifically look on the web for the 
relationship between Emacs (RMS's creation) and GOSMACS (a derived work).

In short.  The BSD license is for those of an ideological bent, the GPL 
is for people who want to make the world a better place, but don't want 
to get roughly screwed by a thousand pound gorilla whilst they do it. ;)

PS, please take the time to find the real meaning of the word 
ideological before deciding what you think of the above sentence.

-- 
Geoff

>Steve
>
>[1]
>BDOS: Big John's Operating System
>
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