[Sussex] Ok the gauntlets on the floor!

[Steve Williams]

On Thursday 10 June 2004 16:15, Geoff Teale wrote:
> 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 ;-)

Capital C please, as in "C"onservative, you comm^H^H^H^H^H floating voter.

Steve W.

>
> >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.