"Rjack" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
Matt Assay of C-Net fame and one of cyberworld's *biggest* supporters
of the GPL is bailing out like he's Arlen Specter's campaign manager:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10229817-16.html
"I have spent years advocating the GNU General Public License as the
optimal open-source license for commercial open source. Roughly nine
years after I first became a fan of the GPL, I think I've been wrong.
My admiration for the GPL mostly stemmed from its ability to mimic,
but then invert, proprietary licensing. The GPL is like opening a
cannister of radioactive waste: while your competitors can touch it,
you're dead certain that they won't."
I have read the blogs from this sunshine boy on occasion and this is the
first time that I could agree. Perhaps there is a sane person inside every
FOSS fan just waiting for the inevitable to occur and release its soul.
I note, too, the rather sane words of Raymond and Thorvalds. Linus was
always, I admit, a sane individual, but he was also the banner boy for the
crazies, so his reputation was tarnished in many places.
I have on previous occasions asserted that the GPL protects nothing and
challenged the COLA fans to provide a scenario wherein anyone could actually
take an open source code base and make it proprietary to the detriment of
the FOSS community or even to the advantage of the person "stealing" the
open source code. I received nothing comprehensible in return, just the
normal blather from the unthinking chorus of fools who are mostly just proud
of their ability to "plonk" anything difficult to answer.
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