*BSD News Article 39447


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From: vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com (Vernon Schryver)
Subject: Re: Is FreeBSD free?
Message-ID: <D0nLMs.69A@calcite.rhyolite.com>
Organization: Rhyolite Software
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 1994 15:56:52 GMT
References: <KSTAILEY.94Dec7103038@leidecker.gsfc.nasa.gov> <D0GvM0.5EA@calcite.rhyolite.com> <AMANDA.94Dec10155821@micro.iesd.auc.dk>
Lines: 34

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.

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.


Vernon Schryver    vjs@rhyolite.com