On Sat, Dec 16, 2000 at 12:25:19AM -0700, John Galt wrote: > Rewriting the damned GPL to be compatible with the rest of the world > might be a good place to start rewriting.
If the damned GPL didn't have that "incompatibility" there would be no Debian, BSD would probably still require you signed a license agreement before you could look at it, and we'd probably be arguing in some AOL chatroom about some Microsoft breakage. > > OpenSSL is doing something approximately in that direction, but I don't > > see that it solves all the problems. > > Where's the technical issue? The only problem that's been postulated is > the license combatibility. See the message with the header: Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Non-GPL authors are perfectly free to reimplement GPLed works, if > > they don't like the GPL license. Why shouldn't GPL authors be free to > > reimplement non-GPL works if they don't like the non-GPL license? > > Are they? Show me one successful case. See the message with the header: Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > Would it even have more difference than the legal minimum to make it a > > > separate work? > > > > If it's an independent rewrite, perhaps to a different underlying api, > > then it would pretty much have to be an independent work. > > Aha! If the API is screwed, that isn't just a political issue now is it? Screwed? More like: in spite of all that you've tried to teach me, I still have this underlying concept that there's more than one way to do it. Having looked at the code, here's what I'd do different: [1] I'd design the thing around an event loop, instead of trying to graft one one in a backwards-compatible fashion using callbacks. [2] I'd include API support for everything which can be done through ssh. > > > Would EAY recognize it as a different way to do it? > > > > Copyright isn't about functionality. It's about literal copying. > > ...which you have every right to do ATM, just so long as you don't > plagiarize. My question still stands: if the programs are so similar that > the author can't tell the difference, how technically oriented was the > change? What are you talking about? > > > This just sounds like an Orwellian redefinition of the BSDL, not a > > > different way to do things. > > > > I suppose you could describe the openssl license as an orwellian > > redefinition... [To address the comment I think you were trying to > > express, but did not: I don't see how you could describe someone else's > > independent authoring of code as orwellian redefinition of the BSDL, > > If it were truly independent, no. But what you're proposing isn't > independent is it? The dependency lies in WHY the program was > authored. If it were authored because the new author has a better way > to do it, then we have the issue of the original author having the > beholden right to do whatever they want with their code. If it was > rewritten just because the author disagreed with the licensing terms, > and the terms are DFSG free, it isn't Debian's place to encourage > it--making free variants of non-free programs is well within the SC, > making free variants of already free programs is something that Debian > should accept if as a _fait accompli_ but not go out of its way to > start. I don't have a clue what you're talking about. Thanks, -- Raul
