On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 7:10 PM, Jacob Meuser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 03:38:13AM +0530, debian developer wrote: > > I have a few questions(no, not which license is better.:): > It all depends on what you want to do. At the very basic level, the GPL gives freedom to the end users. The BSD license gives freedom to the developers. > > If what i hear is correct, there are companies(Microsoft) which > > take BSD code (network stack i hear) and made it proprietary by not > > giving back anything. What i don't understand is are we not > > just because a company takes BSD code and makes a proprietary product out > of it, does not mean the original code is any less free. > Not only that. The GPL does not stop all proprietary forks either. In the past, gcc was forked internally by some big shops. Since they did not redistribute the code outside of the company, there was no need to share the code back up stream. GPL could do nothing to stop that. However, after a while, the pain of maintaining that fork was so big that the forking developers rebelled and refuse to continue do fork. So, the changes rolled back upstream. Would that have happened with a BSD license? Yes. So, in the end, does it matter? Not really. Now, take a look at something like kerberos. Microsoft took it, and applied some proprietary extensions. They forked it, and tried to keep it internal. The kerberos standard people said - either document the changes, or we'll define the extensions and then you'll be out of compliance - so Microsoft caved. But they would not have even went with Kerberos if it was GPLed. But today, my linux boxes at work can authenticate using kerberos. This is a big win for me. -- http://www.glumbert.com/media/shift http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk "This officer's men seem to follow him merely out of idle curiosity." -- Sandhurst officer cadet evaluation. "Securing an environment of Windows platforms from abuse - external or internal - is akin to trying to install sprinklers in a fireworks factory where smoking on the job is permitted." -- Gene Spafford learn french: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1G-3laJJP0&feature=related
