Starting a new thread about licenses, so that those not interested could skip that.
On Nov 25, 2007 11:53 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > If it is true that SAGE is legaly unable to include GPL v2 only and > > GPL v3 only programs, not modifying them, not relicensing them, but > > just > > calling them from Python, then FSF did a terrible move, against the > > free software and against the end users, which GPL is supposed to > > protect. > > > > Ondrej > > Yes. And disturbingly, they are wholly unapologetic about the entire ordeal, > and suggest that sign everything as "GPL v2 or later", ensuring that any v2+ > software is "locked" into v4, v5, etc., no matter what draconian changes are > made to the license. And if you don't like it, you can rewrite your entire > project, from the ground up. RMS is very much taking the path of every > "communist leader" who came before him (y'know, except without the shooting > people). Yep. Communist leaders never shoot people themselves. But they impose their idealism above what people really want/do/need/think and do not hesitate to use force (activism) to do it. And that always have very bad consequences, in reality doing the opposite than what they wanted to achieve in the first place. I strongly disagree with licensing my programs with something like "v2 or later, at *your* option". That's not a license. I want exact terms and conditions under which my program can be used. So at the beginning I was unsure about moving from GPL to BSD in SymPy, but now I am convinced it was a very good move. As to RMS - I think the idea behind GPL 2 is marvelous, because it works, as shown empirically. But it only works when everyone is using either GPL 2, or non copylefted licenses. By introducing GPL 3 it stops working. I read on RMS's web page, that he is using the gnewsense distribution, because Debian is not free enough, as one can read in the FAQ here: http://www.gnewsense.org/FAQ/FAQ particularly: Neither Debian nor Ubuntu are fully free. Ubuntu installs non-free software by default. Debian provides non-free software through its repositories and includes non-free kernel drivers. The reason why Debian is keeping the non-free section is here: http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/non_free_amendtment_rationale and as to the non-free kernel drivers, that's basically that someone needs to take it out of the kernel and because it sucks, Debian decided to make an exception until Linus solves the problem upstream: http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_007 And now the funny thing - RMS doesn't use Debian because of the "problems" above, but he has no problems with the GNU Documentation license, which is not free according to Debian (it doesn't obey the Debian Free Software Guidelines) and that's a real problem. I also read some of his political texts, and you are right, that he has a left wing thinking. He only wants to see some facts, but that's a very bad way of making decisions in real life. One should ask: if I do this (create GPL3), it will trigger these, these and these consequences (artificially creating a barrier to combine some open source programs, maybe protecting some open source programs more), and if I do this (stick to GPL 2), it will have these, these and these consequences. And then one should decide. But deciding only because of some idealism, that's almost always a bad decision. Imho. Ondrej --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
