Hi,
On 06/06/2010 11:25 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
linux grew not because of GPL but because it followed the bazaar mode of
development - unlike RMS's projects which were highly restricted as long as he
was part of them. Emacs, gcc etc only took off properly after he was 'retired'
from them.
Invalid.
*All* free operating systems follow the bazaar model. Only linux became
mainstream and stayed free. Mach+BSD became mainstream in their OSX avatar but
it is non-free:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X
Did you read the links I posted ? Here is a quote in one of them from linus
himself:
"""
But for a project I actually care about, I would never choose the BSD license.
The license doesn't encode my fundamental beliefs of 'fairness'. I think the BSD
license encourages a 'everybody for himself' mentality, and doesn't encourage
people to work together, and to merge."
"Let me put this in source management terms, since I've also been working
on a source control management project for the last few years: the BSD license
encourages 'branching', but the fact is, branching is not really all that
interesting. What's interesting is 'merging': the branching is just a largely
irrelevant prerequisite to be able to merge.
"The GPLv2 encourages *merging*. Again, the right to 'branch' needs to be
there in order for merges to be possible, but the right to branch is actually
much less important than the right to 'merge'."
"""
Do you really want to disagree with linus about his choice of license for his
own OS ? He has said *plenty* of times (read the links I posted) that choosing
the GPLv2 license was the best thing he did for linux !! ...and you want to deny
it's effect ? ...if you do, you are just being unreasonably stubborn, pretty
much like the character this thread talks about.
Stallman is a genius - no doubt about it. But he is incapable of
working collaboratively with others - which linus does, and guido and a whole
lot of other bdfls. If you want to learn about how to talk about freedom -
listen to RMS. If you want to learn how to write open source software and
sustain it - listen to linus.
True as it maybe, it is not rms's genius, but his stubbornness to not confirm
and take the easy path, as most others would've, that laid the foundations of
the larger movement that we know as FOSS today.
Like I said in one of my other posts in this thread, talking about freedom and
writing open source software are *not* mutually exclusive !
Linus, irrespective of what you want to imagine, cares *deeply* about freedom
too (read the links), he just prefers to be pragmatic about it.
cheers,
- steve
--
random spiel: http://lonetwin.net/
what i'm stumbling into: http://lonetwin.stumbleupon.com/
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