*BSD News Article 39384


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From: mib@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Michael I Bushnell)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Re: Is FreeBSD free?
Date: 12 Dec 1994 10:08:05 GMT
Organization: Touring Consulting Services
Lines: 57
Message-ID: <MIB.94Dec12050805@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
References: <KSTAILEY.94Dec7103038@leidecker.gsfc.nasa.gov>
	<D0GvM0.5EA@calcite.rhyolite.com>
	<AMANDA.94Dec10155821@micro.iesd.auc.dk>
	<D0nLMs.69A@calcite.rhyolite.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu
In-reply-to: vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com's message of Sun, 11 Dec 1994 15:56:52
	GMT

In article <D0nLMs.69A@calcite.rhyolite.com> vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com (Vernon Schryver) writes:

   In article <AMANDA.94Dec10155821@micro.iesd.auc.dk> amanda@iesd.auc.dk (Per Abrahamsen) writes:

   >>>>>> "Vernon" == Vernon Schryver <vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com> writes:
   >
   >Vernon> - The GPL people think people working on BSD software
   >Vernon> without adding GPL's are Traitors To Humanity.
   >
   >FUD!
   >
   >The FSF (``GPL People'' if anyone are) distributes BSD software
   >without adding the GPL.  They hardly think of themselves as ``Traitors
   >To Humanity''.
   >
   >Please post an apology.

   If anyone owes anyone an apology, it is you who owe me one.

   Look back at the old, public charges from rms about the evils CSRG was
   commiting by not putting a GPL on 4.3BSD (or perhaps it was net2).  Talk
   to some current contributors who have been browbeaten about not using
   the GPL on their own code.  By all accounts, the GPL people (not just
   the FSF) comply with other copyrights under protest.

It is the FSF's opinion that using the GPL advances the cause of free
software.  While software copyrighted under the BSD copyright is
certainly free, derivates are not necessarily so, and so the BSD
copyright is less effective at advancing the cause of free software.
(Or so the argument goes.  A cogent case can be made that the BSD
copyright sets a better example [or perhaps gets more corporate
sponsors] and so it serves better.  I don't think this argument is
correct, but it isn't prima facie invalid.)

   Anyone who wants to use the GPL should be and is inarguably free to do
   so.  The only controversy concerns people who do not want to use the
   GPL.  This has nothing to do with idiotic patents, except that the GPL
   mania is the obverse of patenting; it's only yet another class of people
   that wants to own and control the distribution what other people write.
   Collectivists are no more moral or admirable than old fashioned robber
   barons or modern patent holders.

When RMS says "you really ought to use the GPL" he means exactly that:
In his opinion, you would be doing more good for more people, in the
long run, by using the GPL.  Nothing more, nothing less.  

Deciding not to use the GPL, and instead using something like the BSD
copyright is thus still good, because it's still free.  But it's not
*as* good as GPL's software, because it doesn't advance the goal as
effectively.

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