Hi there,
On Apr 9, 2007, at 7:29 PM, Jeroen Massar wrote:
...
GPL is good though if you want to force people to give back the
code to
you so that you can use it in your own dual-licensed projects.
For people wanting true freedom of their code use: BSD or ISC it ;)
The problem is the word "free". BSD people tend to interpret "free"
as "I can do whatever I want with that code! Hell, I can even make it
"unfree" again by turning it into a proprietary product!". In my
opinion, /code/ that is labeled "free" should always remain "free",
no matter what the possible actions are. This ain't the case with BSD
code. /You/ may do as you like with the code, but this doesn't make
the code "free", it just liberates your actions. BSD code is not
"free" code as such. It just implies "free" actions. It's just a
matter of perspective.
Tip for coders: Start a lousy little project that many people will
like,
then release it as GPL, then if lucky people will use it and give you
patches, now you can sell it back to them ;) Okay, that stops at the
moment you have other people's code in there which you can't
dual-license though, and that is the fun of GPL: you cripple yourself.
You don't have to accept GPL contributions to your own codebase if
you want to dual license. Their code contributions, your choice. As
easy as that. It's all about respect. Respect their copyright or drop
it. Easy, simple, fair. In fact, GPL projects offer more incentives
of contributing that BSD projects. Someone wanting to contribute to a
BSD project has to give up all control of their contribution. Not
everybody is willing to follow down that road. The GPL at least makes
sure that nobody can legally exploit a contribution without making it
available to the users so that they can profit too. This is a much
more valuable incentive to participate.
If you /really/ want to include GPL contributions in your codebase in
dual licensing schemes, you'll have to ask for permission of the
copyright owner of that contribution. This is the most natural thing
in the world.
This whole bcw(4) discussion turned out to be a "Those GNU/Linux/GPL
fanatics don't allow us to be even more free than they claim to be!"
cryout. The funny thing is that it comes down to an OpenBSD
contributor who didn't respect the copyright of some other party by
redistributing GPL code without the GPL license through a public CVS
repository. It's amazing how a community that should actually take a
defensive position in a matter like this switches into attack mode
and makes the violated party the culprit. The majority of the posts
in this discussion, be it on undeadly, some other mailing list or
here on [misc], reflect the mental pattern of six-year olds who
cannot argue reasonably. I really have to admit that if these people
represent the majority of the OpenBSD community, I am disgusted and
most of all disappointed. But of course, it just may be so that
decent people choose not to take part in these threads at all.
regards,
Tobias
