Damien Kick wrote: > Giorgos Keramidas wrote: > >> On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 23:08:02 -0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> >>> So much for the "free" in "free software". If you can't actually use >>> it without paying money, whether for the software or for some book, it >>> isn't really free, is it? >> >> >> Please do not confuse the term 'free' in 'free software' with 'gratis'. >> >> 'Gratis', i.e. 'lacking a monetary price tag' is something *very* >> different from the meaning of 'free' in 'free software'.
Sure, but where does the infection thing come in? Suppose RMS publishes a new library call add-42, whose api is add-42, inputs n, outputs n+42, source left as an exercise, and Kenny decides he can use it, it is great. Now if Kenny uses it in his commercial software, add-42 does not somehow become less free to ride 'neath the starry skies above, don't fence me in. But RMS wants Kenny's hide. Nothing Kenny wrote derived from add-42, but RMS wants it all. Kenny happened to solve the traveling salesman problem and protein-folding and passed the fricking Turing test by using add-42 wherever he needed 42 added to a number, and RMS wants credit and ownership and control of it all. He and his license shall now dictate access and use of all that code. The handcuffs are on, and they are inscribed "free". No wonder the GPL has gone nowhere. Freely. RMS reasonably wanted that add-42 not get co-opted, but that in no way necessitated the land grab that is GPL. The GPL is a gratuitous reach only fancifully justified by wanting to ensure that open source remain open. So this has nothing to do with freedom in /any/ sense of the word, it has to do with a political agenda opposed to the idea of private property. kzo -- http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/ "We are what we pretend to be." -Kurt Vonnegut -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
