"a b" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I wonder what would happen if any of the Blackdown developers had put a GPL
>license in any part of their code fixes?
If Blackdown had GPLed their patches, then any code that incorporated
them would be GPL as well.
I believe that Blackdown did not have the option to do this. They had
to agree to Sun's license to get the code, they don't have a lot of
choice of what license they themselves use. Sun's license is the root
of the problem, from the free software point of view.
>Maybe GPL was a good idea after all? Now we see what they mean by
>protecting your rights to give away your software.
Yes, exactly, this is why the GPL exists.
In this case, I think the basic goal of free software so far still
seems to have been preserved - some folks wrote some code, it got
used, it got incorporated into other versions and improved them. So
far, nothing proprietary has really happened.
The main problem here seems to be more one of credit, which we've
discussed to death now. Companies like Inprise are blundering into the
free software community and making a few mistakes. It reminds me of
Corel's recent mistakes with their licensing on their distribution. No
malice intended, just clumsy. We should try to cut them a little slack
and help them do the Right Thing.
There are deeper problems lurking underneath, though, having to do
with Sun's control of Java. Sun isn't interested in the ultimate goals
of free software, and they're powerful enough to cause a lot of
trouble with Java. We play a dangerous game in the free software
world, using Java, hoping that we can trust Sun enough to not really
screw people the way Microsoft has with their control of the Win32
API. The commercial world is playing the same game, too, and it's the
root of so many of the schisms in the Java world.
That's why I'm glad to see a big player like IBM also enter into the
Java/Linux fray. The current ports are bound by Sun's lciense just
like the rest, but IBM has enough muscle to push back if need be.
>A well wisher.
Pseudonymous one, at that.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
. . . . . . . . http://www.media.mit.edu/~nelson/
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