Re: license query
On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 4:41 PM Dave Horsfall wrote: [...] > Oh, and I've always regarded the GNU licence as being both a virus (it > compels to use it in your own stuff) and restrictive (you are forced to > adopt certain conditions); for that reason, I avoid GNU software where > possible. > > Agreed. IIRC up to GPL 2.2 the viral effects were not clear and you could still get away with the linking issue the way Torvalds did with Linux ... but the friction between Torvalds and RMS started revealing some of the cracks around GPL in Linux' early days; that's why the Linux kernel remained under a *very* specific version of ti. But with v3 it seems pretty much game over for the GPL... IMHO, anyway. In several discussions with RMS throughout the years, I have always asked about business models around GPL, even once in circa 2000 in visit to the FSF HQ and the answer from them was: we're still trying to figure that out. hmmm. It wasn't until much later with ESR's CATB (and other books) and the birth of the OSI that people were actually trying to understand how to reconcile OSS with making a living. Anyway *BSD has never had this problem but sadly FreeBSD was released after Linux so the damage was already done. At least FBSD met a better fate than Minix who also tried to catch the OSS wave but that one was definitively too little too late. Beside's Tanenbaum (hence Minix) had been marked by the stench of the Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate in 1992. In any case a fascinating topic. Best, Alejandro Imass > -- Dave >
Re: license query
On Thu, 7 Mar 2019, Joshua Root wrote: This license is nonfree because it doesn't allow distribution of modified versions, and because "No reverse engineering, decompilation, or disassembly of this Software is permitted." We can still have it in MacPorts, but be very careful not to patch it in any way. The license option should be set to "Restrictive/Distributable". Software licences are pretty much a necessary evil. I once sprung someone who re-posted something I wrote to Usenet, carefully deleting my name and adding his own. Ever since then, all my stuff has a modified BSD licence, and it pretty much boils down to "Do what the hell you like with it, but don't pretend that you wrote it". Oh, and I've always regarded the GNU licence as being both a virus (it compels to use it in your own stuff) and restrictive (you are forced to adopt certain conditions); for that reason, I avoid GNU software where possible. -- Dave
