Nick Guenther wrote: > In fairness, these charges seem overzealous; deliberately > misinterpretting the spirit of the GPL.
That's actually pretty common and successful tactic of the MSFTers that frequent FreeBSD and troll here occasionaly, too. ... I don't know, though, so I'd > like it to be cleared up; as I understand it, a web app doesn't count > as "publishing"; people just using code like that are under no > obligation to publish it, and it's just the author/vendor who is > obligated to provide source... I actually listed to Richard's interview earlier today http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/2007/10/bsdtalk132-richard-stallman.html About 10 minutes into it he brings up problems with the DMCA (for those in the EU, there is the EUCD), which apply very much to OpenBSD. About 22 minutes into the interview his praise of BSD leads into a perfect set up to pitch the core of OpenBSD to a wider audience. > Though, I suppose RMS (a hypothetical, consistent RMS) mght argue that > if you are providing a "web app" piece of software, then if your users > cannot edit your site on you ("modify software they use") then you are > violating the Four Freedoms and the GPL. > Is any of that anywhere near reality? No. That's been gone over countless times: you are not obliged to take other people's edits to your code. > Argh, the GPL is so ridiculously complex; nobody understands it. Many do, though. For me it's rather straight forward, as is the BSD license. There are many ways to look at the positive goals of the GPL, but they're not relevant here, since OpenBSD is already set on the BSD license. > ... The > main attraction open source has for me is that I *don't have to think > about licensing shit*, and GNU (especially now with GPLv3) miss that > goal completely. Again, that's why there are several licenses. In some situations, BSD-style license most suited to the task, in others, the GPL ones. Having a way to sift out the non-free stuff during a search of the ports tree would be useful. -Lars -Lars
