Re: Can you be free and non-copyleft at the same time?

[Jeremy Lea <reg shale csir co za>]

Hi,

You should be careful what you say while BSD people might be
listening...

On Tue, Feb 23, 1999 at 02:27:05PM +1100, Wayne Schuller wrote:
> No the whole point is that the BSD licence isn't good enough. If it's
> not copylefted, how can it really be free?
> 
> I think this is why Miguel posted examples of the abuse that happens
> to the BSD/X licenses because they are not copylefted (ie: free).
>
> BSD people are very nice, but if they want to license there system in
> a non-free way which opens them to exploitation, why should free
> projects such as ours bend over backwards to support them?  We
> honestly don't need them (or proprietry vendors)... the goal is to get
> a fully GPL'ed desktop enviroment.  The only question now is how many
> years (or less) do we leave everything LGPLed before it moves over to
> GPL?

I don't expect you to understand this, but BSD developers *want* people
to 'abuse' their code by using it.  They don't subscribe to the FSF
definition of 'free'.  Their definition of free is software which can be
used without restriction, not software which demands that others give up
their IP rights.

FreeBSD's goal is to provide a free OS.  Free for everyone to use, no
matter what their agenda.  What you call 'exploitation', BSD developers
call 'good use'.  I'd appreciate if you'd stick to the dictionary
definition of 'free', not the doublespeak of the FSF.

It doesn't really make a difference for FreeBSD whether libGTop is LGPL
or GPL.  Most of the code in sysdeps/freebsd is available in the FreeBSD
tree, under the BSD licence, since it's the same magic that's needed for
top, ps, etc.  FreeBSD developers will continue to make sure it works.

With libGTop under the GPL or LGPL, it just means that there is one more
piece of software which has to be rewritten in the future, so that it is
available for developers to use.  Miguel's examples show an extreme bias. 
How can you claim rights to someone else's hard work?  HP, Sun, etc. paid
good money for the work that was done on their extensions.  From a BSD
perspective, proprietry code and GPL'ed code are just as useless, but just
as welcome to reuse BSD code.

Regards,
 -Jeremy

PS: GPL advocates, please direct flames to private mail, so that the list
doesn't have to put up with yet another GPL/BSD flame war.  Or better yet,
to /dev/null, since that's where I'll send them.  This will be my only post
on this subject.

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