RE: Signatories to the Declaration of Software Freedom

["Suresh Ramasubramanian" <mallet@xxxxxxx>]

Hi folks

My two cents (after a two day break organizing a computer quiz at Infy Pune
and attending a wedding there) ...

Sandip Bhattacharya [Friday, March 02, 2001 11:46 PM]:

> Why do *you* have to get so concerned when an author doesn't
> mind his work getting plagiarised or getting closed sourced?

If the author doesnt mind it, *and clearly knows that fact* he will pick an
alternative license (of the dozens available) to release his code.  Not the
GPL.

> What if the author doesn't give a damn to who benefits from
> his/her software - end users or companies who want to shorten
> their development times?

I'm all for freedom of choice in this matter - the author is free to choose
whatever $licence agrees with him.

> Why do YOU have to be the moral policemen for these authors,
> taking decisions of what they should do? That's the same as
> what these so called "cultural policemen" of UP and other
> states doing!

leave the cultural police and the saffron brigade out of this please ...
they are so near in their concepts to a certain guy with a charlie chaplin
moustache (and who was parodied by charlie chaplin in "the great dictator")
that mentioning them is like invoking Godwin's Law (whereby the thread ends
at that point and the guy who triggers this invocation is considered to have
lost).

You have some valid points - and so please dont confuse the issue at hand :)

> Why do you attack M$ kind of business practices with as much
> hate as the BSD/Apache folks way of doing things?

M$ is (as much as I hate to say) following their own licensing (or
copyrighting, shall we say) in releasing their software.  The BSD / Apache /
$random_licence folks follow their own licensing.

The simple thing is, if you dont agree with the license a product is
released under, or feel that it restricts you, please feel free not to use
it in your code.

> Why can't you just provide an option for software developers
> who would like protection for their software, rather than
> bamboozeling or trumpeting that GPL is the _only_ solution?

Contrary to what you say, nobody says GPL is the ONLY solution - "the only
good solution", perhaps (but I'm not going there <g>).

There are plenty of licenses and there's lots of stuff released under each
license (and is a reasonable equivalent of the GPL'd software).  So, pick
whatever license suits your needs and stick to it for your development.

> Why do you assume that IP (in software, music, medicine etc.)
> has no value regardless of whether the author desires to get
> monetary benefit

Hey, not even the GPL says that, for god's sake.  And yeah, you do have a
point - the BSD / Apache licenses are also quite good - and a bit more
useable if someone wants to do what you suggest (open source code integrated
into / interfaced with closed source apps)

	-s