61–70 of 98 posts
This probably isn't appropriate for posting here, but I'm out of ideas... Does anyone have a contact email for mattmarroon.com? There's an infected iframe distributing malware in his Twitter Revisited post but I can't find a way to get in touch with him (no published emails and his whois is protected).
I don't think this post is a good way to frame the argument. In particular, it's pretty hyperbolic when it comes to the effectiveness of Gates' philanthropic efforts. Like, what kind of madman would oppose the greatest giving campaign the world has ever seen? America's earlier robber barons showed similar changes of heart. It seems incredibly misguided to frame an abusive monopoly as a triumph of laissez faire econom…
I was more saying that you shouldn't attack Gates FOR his philanthropy, as Stallman does. Not that his giving makes his business practices or proprietary software immune to criticism.
Moreover I didn't read the RMS as attacking the foundation.
I was put off by the tone of many of the blogs pieces about the RMS article. I've never seen RMS as "bitter" about MS. I think it was good timing on his part during this little love fest at Gates' retirement to point out that MS has not done much for computing science. RMS has given programmers a lot, much of it for free (as in beer and as in freedom). The only thing he seemed to be bitter about is the Linux versus Gnu/Linux thing.
I suppose this reflects my age, I felt the same way about the Arc bashing when it was released. RMS walks the talk, say what you want about him but you know where he stands. I wish we all had a similar regard for the US constitution.
This probably isn't appropriate for posting here, but I'm out of ideas... Does anyone have a contact email for mattmarroon.com? There's an infected iframe distributing malware in his Twitter Revisited post but I can't find a way to get in touch with him (no published emails and his whois is protected).
you could use his startup contact form - http://www.draftmix.com/help/contact_us
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It's also available on Google Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7707585592627775409 or as avi: http://vp.video.google.com/videodownload?version=0&secur... It's funny, but I thought Stallman was portrayed very well in that movie. I found final scene in which he describes what "the whole GNU project" is in one sentence especially touching - it's my favorite in the film.
The scene I found most amusing was during Stallman's acceptance speech of an award at LinuxWorld when Linus Torvald's kids were running around on stage distracting everyone. Stallman then goes into his usual diatribe about how Linux should always be refered to as "GNU/Linux". Cut to scene of LinuxWorld show floor, with no "GNU" in sight. Very symbolic and representative of the GNU and Linux relationship. (starts at 1…
But maybe that's because I've never worked on anything as hard as Stallman did on GNU. Still, it seems impolite.
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> The MIT license and the BSD license are much truer to the idea of "free" than any FSF licenses. The point of the licenses is different. BSD and MIT gives you the freedom to take away other people's freedoms using the code. FSF does not. I don't think it's quite obvious which of these is "truer to the idea of 'free'", which is a pretty vague phrase. Where you are coming from makes sense, but one could also think of…
You're not taking anything away when building open source software into proprietary systems, other users are free to get the original project just like you were. FSF licenses just restrict the way I can release my derivative work. At best the FSF license can be seen as an understandable restriction on freedom to preserve open source software by requiring reciprocation. To me there is no question that MIT and BSD lice…
From Stallamn's view, I'm pretty sure you're not taking anything away by restricting the creation of more proprietary software. Proprietary software pretty much doesn't exist for him.
To understand his point, you really have to apply all of the moral frames relating to 'freedom' to software licensing. In that view, to license software without distributing source is akin to licensing software with a clause to give up your first born.
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The only restriction is that one can't deny others the same freedoms. The GPL is more restrictive than that. If one puts code online and says "do whatever you want with it," everyone has the same freedom to use it. No one can deny anyone else the freedom to use it, short of blocking access to the server.
I think he meant to say "one can't deny others the same freedoms on derivative works".
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The MIT license and the BSD license are much truer to the idea of "free" than any FSF licenses. The FSF licenses cause more proprietary code to come into existence (duplication at a great cost to society) when companies cannot integrate GPL products with their proprietary licensed software. So companies write their proprietary version of the component and no one can see the source, or the source of their subcomponent…
> The MIT license and the BSD license are much truer to the idea of "free" than any FSF licenses. The point of the licenses is different. BSD and MIT gives you the freedom to take away other people's freedoms using the code. FSF does not. I don't think it's quite obvious which of these is "truer to the idea of 'free'", which is a pretty vague phrase. Where you are coming from makes sense, but one could also think of…
This sort of doctrinaire newspeak is what gives GPL advocates the appearance of a cult. Developers who incorporate some open source code in their app and don't release it aren't taking away anyone's freedoms.
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I don't think RMS is opposed to all non-free books, but believes that books meant as reference or instruction ought to be free. And as pg mentioned, the fact that the code is free for (implicitly) any use whatsoever means that the code could be used in proprietary software without issue, and thus the code isn't free. Was RMS opposed to the book, the code, or both? I suspect both, and since it appears that he quickly…
RMS doesn't have a problem with the ACL code (obviously he would prefer the GPL for it, but I reckon he would consider it free software), as he doesn't have a problem with GNU/Linux distributions shipping e.g. BSD-licensed code. And, yes, he is opposed to non-free books, though he distinguishes between those which should be modifiable and those which shouldn't be; for more on this: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyr…
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You're not taking anything away when building open source software into proprietary systems, other users are free to get the original project just like you were. FSF licenses just restrict the way I can release my derivative work. At best the FSF license can be seen as an understandable restriction on freedom to preserve open source software by requiring reciprocation. To me there is no question that MIT and BSD lice…
> You're not taking anything away when building open source software into proprietary systems, I don't think that's necessarily true. Imagine an open source system that's fairly popular, but with just a few developers. ProprietaryCo hires them all up, and users realize that if they want improved versions of said project, they're going to have to pay, or find some new developers. Far fetched? Not really, it's pretty s…
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> You're not taking anything away when building open source software into proprietary systems, I don't think that's necessarily true. Imagine an open source system that's fairly popular, but with just a few developers. ProprietaryCo hires them all up, and users realize that if they want improved versions of said project, they're going to have to pay, or find some new developers. Far fetched? Not really, it's pretty s…
I guess I imagine that style of thing will be a rarity. Its not specifically proprietary software thats creating a problem in that case though, its that a company is stopping development on the open source project by hiring all the programmers away, that could happen with a FSF license as well.
As to how often that kind of thing happens, it's hard to say. BSD/Sun is a big, obvious case. It would be interesting to get statistics on others.
My general strategy is to use BSD style licensing when my code might be included in someone else's project (Hecl), and GPL if it's a "finished product" kind of thing.