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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.mel.aone.net.au!grumpy.fl.net.au!news.webspan.net!ix.netcom.com!super.zippo.com!zdc!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.bc.net!nntp.portal.ca!cynic.portal.ca!not-for-mail From: cjs@cynic.portal.ca (Curt Sampson) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy Subject: Re: Linux vs whatever Date: 28 Jan 1997 08:42:42 -0800 Organization: Internet Portal Services, Inc. Lines: 46 Message-ID: <5claa2$jq1@cynic.portal.ca> References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <5qC7y0gTzDLB091yn@ibm.net> <5ciraf$gs@cynic.portal.ca> <32EE0B70.1657@ml.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: cynic.portal.ca Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:154668 comp.os.linux.networking:66391 comp.os.linux.setup:94238 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:5760 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2065 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy:51171 comp.os.os2.advocacy:263908 On Tue, 28 Jan 1997, tethys wrote: > How? By placing it under the GPL, they ensured it will be free for > anyone to use, and port to new platforms if desired. Only as a separate program. It can't, for example, be integrated into WinZip or PKZIP (without forcing the author to give away full source code for WinZip or PKZIP), which would automatically give it much, much wider distribution. Nor could a word processor be able automatically to gzip files, for the same reason. It may be reasonable in some people's minds to say that if you take a one thousand line GPL'd program and make fifty lines of changes, you must give away those changes. But I should think hardly anyone would think it reasonable to say that if you integrate five hundred lines of GPL'd source into a ten thousand line program you wrote yourself, you must now give away those ten thousand lines of code you wrote. Yet that's exactly what the GPL says. The GPL is very un-free because the licence insists on glomming itself not only onto the source it came with, but any other source it's assocaited with; it's basically a sort of source code virus. That limits freedom. I don't think `free' is a word that should be associated with the GPL; if you are a programmer it's not in the slightest bit free; you just pay for it in a different way. > Anyone is free to reimplement it as a non-GPLed piece > of code, should they be perverse enough to want to try. As a matter of fact, that has been done. In NetBSD we now have a non-GPL'd zlib, and we're writing front ends for it so we can get rid of gzip and gunzip and the like. It should say something to you about the GPL when several major free software projects (including all the BSDs) are working so hard to expunge GPL'd source out of their systems. > Tet (tired of people getting their facts wrong) I don't see what facts I've gotten wrong here. cjs -- Curt Sampson cjs@portal.ca Info at http://www.portal.ca/ Internet Portal Services, Inc. Vancouver, BC (604) 257-9400 De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil.