johnjohn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> You're confusing RedHat with djb. RedHat can't do anything to stop
> anyone from forking rpm.
But doing so is considered quite rude in the free software community, for
good reason.
I certainly don't consider forking to be the big advantage of open source.
I consider the ability to make fast fixes for a production-critical
problem to be one of the big advantages of open source. Dan's license is
just as good as open source for my personal use; where it has difficulties
is that it prevents vendors from making the same sorts of hot fixes. (For
reasons that I do understand.)
I don't want to see qmail become open source because I want to see it
fork. I'd like to see it become open source so that portions of its code
can be reused in other open source projects (Dan has an interesting
variation on C that may be of general utility), so that vendors will be
able to deploy hot-fixes until Dan can fix any problems that crop up, and
so that the software is guaranteed to have a future beyond the life or
interest of any one person.
--
Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
