license query

[Alejandro Imass]

On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 4:41 PM Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

[...]


> Oh, and I've always regarded the GNU licence as being both a virus (it
> compels to use it in your own stuff) and restrictive (you are forced to
> adopt certain conditions); for that reason, I avoid GNU software where
> possible.
>
>
Agreed. IIRC up to GPL 2.2 the viral effects were not clear and you could
still get away with the linking issue the way Torvalds did with Linux ...
but the friction between Torvalds and RMS started revealing some of the
cracks around GPL in Linux' early days; that's why the Linux kernel
remained under a *very* specific version of ti.

But with v3 it seems pretty much game over for the GPL... IMHO, anyway. In
several discussions with RMS throughout the years, I have always asked
about business models around GPL, even once in circa 2000 in visit to the
FSF HQ and the answer from them was: we're still trying to figure that out.
hmmm.

It wasn't until much later with ESR's CATB (and other books) and the birth
of the OSI that people were actually trying to understand how to reconcile
OSS with making a living.

Anyway *BSD has never had this problem but sadly FreeBSD was released after
Linux so the damage was already done. At least FBSD met a better fate than
Minix who also tried to catch the OSS wave but that one was definitively
too little too late. Beside's Tanenbaum (hence Minix) had been marked by
the stench of the Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate in 1992.

In any case a fascinating topic.

Best,
Alejandro Imass



> -- Dave
>
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