"Hyman Rosen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
amicus_curious wrote:
Has anyone ever tried to do that? I cannot find any such case.
Well, they're either obeying the license and then the whole
project is under the GPL, or they're stealing and therefore
keeping it secret. So it's hard to say one way or the other.
The Busy Box stuff seems to be a silly egomaniac effort to get casual
users to pay some homage to the author
The authors licensed their code in a specific way. Your ad
hominem attacks against their character notwithstanding,
people who wish to copy and distribute that code may do so
only according to that license. Additionally, your
characterization of, for example, router manufacturers as
"casual users" is ludicrous.
I don't think that you have a correct understanding of "ad hominem" here.
If I said that your arguments were nonsense because you are an uneducated
fool and in the pay of the FSF, that would be ad hominem. If I say that
Richard Stallman is a fat, unkempt fool whose very appearance is repugnant,
that would just be derision or disparagement. Saying the Busy Box authors
are egomaniacs is just belittling and I would continue to say that they do
deserve the label. The FSF in the guise of Moglen and some others are just
picking nits in safe areas where there is really no issue or any effective
resistance. Of late, the only resistance offered was by Verizon who were
freely given a dismissal with predjudice which, in effect, is a license to
distribute the busy box code without bothering with the source distribution
although I am sure they don't care to do so anyway. Verizon, like Davy
Crockett before them, just "grinned them down" and they ran off to find
someone else to play with.
You would have to connect up your statement as to how ludicrous "casual
users" could be and why.
spending a lot of time and money to just look foolish
Since each action has resulted in GPL violations being repaired,
I reject the notion that they look foolish. Whether or not these
actions cost them money depends on the private details of the
settlements they reach, to which neither you nor I are privy.
it is also easily avoided and not necessary for any situation
By all means, people who do not wish to honor the license should
be encouraged to avoid using the software.
A little short sighted there, I think. The objective of the open source
community is to get everyone using the same thing and periodically improving
on it in order to make progress. Denying someone the opportunity to make
progress due to their unwillingness to fully disclose the improvement robs
those who could benefit beyond the improver's fees of the differential
benefit to be obtained. That is "throwing the baby out with the bath water"
in terms of folk lore and generally considered to be a mistake. I don't
know why you would advocate such nonsense.
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