Re: [LI] Message from RMS.

[Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@xxxxxxx>]

Hi,
>>"Arun" == Arun Sharma <adsharma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

 Arun> That is communism in my book. In your view of the world,
 Arun> software, which you define as wealth should be free for all. In

        Free, as in openly accessible. Free, as in Librè. Equal
 opportunity. At least, that what I have gathered after hours of
 discussion with Richard. I am surprised at the amount of confusion
 surrounding this. 

 Arun> other words, having property is illegal. If this is not
 Arun> communism, what else is ?

        A total lack of understanding of what the GPL stands for, I am
 afraid ;-(

        I had an over night debate with the President of FreeBSD over
 the merits of our licences at the ALS. We differed, but at least he
 knew what the GPL stood for. 

        I can't say the same for this forum.

        Incidentally, I am charging $250 an hour for writing GPL'd
 code at this point. 

 Arun> (b) Even RMS admits that GPL is a *more* restrictive license. He just
 Arun>     insists that it is more "free", for his definition of "free".

        Quite right.

 Arun> Technically, you can create a debian distribution around the NT
 Arun> kernel and Win32 GUI. It's just too expensive, uninteresting
 Arun> and un-heroic to do so.  Cygnus almost does it.

        No. The primary objection would be that teh social contract
 that Debian has with the free software community would prevent it
 from ever being a part of Debian. 

 Arun> PS: Before we go too deep into this, can someone verify that this is 
 Arun> not a hoax ? I couldn't see the RMS posting on debian-user archives.

        It is not a hoax.

        manoj
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Manoj Srivastava   <srivasta@xxxxxxxxxx>  <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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