Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!uhccux!lee
From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Copylefting
Message-ID: <4449@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 29 Jul 89 01:44:31 GMT
References: <634@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 18

From article <634@skye.ed.ac.uk>, by jeff@aiai.uucp (Jeff Dalton):
>...
>But some people seem to think it's wrong for FSF to take that software
>and copyleft their improvements.  Why is it ok for a profit-making
>company to keep their improvements to public domain software completely
>secret and not ok for FSF to put on their kind of restriction?

Taking the FSF view, it is of course not ok to keep such secrets
(assuming the company sells the software).

I don't see anyone saying that the FSF restrictions are
unethical.  One might wonder whether they best serve FSF's
stated goals.  If, for instance, C programs derived by running
bison could remain proprietary, bison would perhaps be more
widely used, more widely tested, and more people could contribute
to its development.

			Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu