On Thu, 2 Jun 2016 22:01:47 +0200 Mattias Andrée <[email protected]> wrote:
Hey Mattias, > Do you think anyone have choked on pastries before and sued? > Do most countries actually require that you state that > your are not responsible for damages causes by something > you are warning about? The warning is enough here, or at > least I have never seen a disclaimer, only a warning label, > and we don't even have translation for ‘disclaimer’. it's not about countries, but commercial law. If you hit a judge who is not very smart when it comes to computers you can have a bad day and actually get sued for such damages. Why take the risk? > Nice one, but I think the FreeBSD project does too much > GPL-bashing. GPL is a good license, at least if you value > free software higher than open source. GPL is not about freedom, it's about control. There are hundreds of examples where companies contributed back to non-GPL projects because they are happily using it internally (closed) but still value the open source character of it. The GPL still has the mindset of evil corporations of the 90's. There are still evil players today, but everbody has to agree that the open source contributions of numerous companies cannot be ignored. The level of control the GPL forces on you, even if you want to write open source software, is insane and ridiculous. If you look at it closer, the GPL has the characteristics of cancer or a parasite. Additionally, by publishing your software under the GPL, most companies would not use your code and actually write their own version (which is most likely worse and full of bugs). This leads to the situation of many people actually having a really bad time with software, because the software they buy is actually full of horrible horrible code that could be avoided. In theory, the wonderland the GPL proposes "works". In reality, nowadays, it doesn't make a lot of sense any more. Richard Stallman used to be right. The companies of the 90's were not yet accustomed to an Open Source environment, but nowadays, his radical claims are just borderline insane. He for instance calls OpenBSD a non-free distribution, because they link to non-free software in the ports tree. Keep in mind that OpenBSD is completely blob-free, which is only achieved in the Linux-camp by obscure distributions nobody uses. So, the net-gain is this: The super-radical position of the FSF actually does more damage than it brings good, as people will never use the obscure FSF- distributions. They won't listen to rms's ramblings and songs either, because he still has not understood the changes the market has undergone in the last decade. We generally have to ask ourselves the question if we really should ramp up on the FSF anti-propaganda. The FSF has the biggest funding of all Open Source non-profit organizations (afaik), but what do they achieve relative to their size? I sometimes regret imagining what the OpenBSD foundation would do with all that money. They actually write useful software and make a positive impact. The FSF's initiatives, especially in regard to Gender mainstreaming and other marxist ideologies is, to say it likely, a long reach to computer science. Just food for thought, please don't start a discussion here about this. I don't care abour your opinion that much anyway. Cheers FRIGN -- FRIGN <[email protected]>
