On April 6, 1999 at 09:53, Dom Mitchell wrote:
> On 5 April 1999, Dan Harkless proclaimed:
> > Richard Coleman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > > I would prefer that it stay under a BSD -style license (as it
> > > currently is). But I'm not too concerned about the details.
> > Just out of curiosity, why do you prefer that over, say, the GPL?
> Probably so that it can more easily be bundled with a commercial Unix,
> as has happened with other versions of MH in the past. Most companies
> tend to be a bit put off by the GPL.
They are put off by it if they want to use the source for there own
needs. If all they are doing is distributed the package as-is, then
the GPL does not matter. It is common practice for commercial Unix
vendors to provide GNU software. For example, I remember that HP
included a CD-ROM of GNU software when you bought an HP workstation.
It can even be considered an indirect selling tool since users will
know that will have a set of useful software since many commercial Unix
vendors have cut back on the amount of software provided with the OS
(like a C compiler).
If there are persons concerned about the nmh being under a BSD-style
license, they can always take over maintenance and use the GPL, or
other license, for future releases (as long as the new license does
not violate the current license).
IMO, I think there is no need for concern that nmh will become
proprietized. With commercial companies more oriented toward GUI
applications (which they will probably just use Nutscrape or
Micro$haft), there appears to be little incentive to take something
like nmh and commercialize it. MH has been around for years, and if
there were to be monetary profit to made from it, I think someone would
have tried it already (btw, if it has been tried, it must have failed
because I have never seen a MH-clone MUA available).
--ewh
----
Earl Hood | University of California: Irvine
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | Electronic Loiterer
http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/ | Dabbler of SGML/WWW/Perl/MIME
