Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!rpi!crdgw1!sungod!davidsen From: davidsen@sungod.crd.ge.com (William Davidsen) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: BISON, GCC, and the GNU public license. (Re: increasing yacc states) Message-ID: <1448@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Date: 2 Aug 89 16:50:38 GMT References: <26@ark1.nswc.navy.mil> <26695@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <5303@ficc.uu.net> <26759@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) Organization: General Electric Corp. R&D, Schenectady, NY Lines: 38 As an addendum to my previous posting, I would like to clarify my view on software ownership. If a piece of software I own does not have obvious commercial potential, I usually release it. You will find my software in the old mod.sources archives, and comp.sources.{unix,misc} as well. I claim copyright and allow free distribution, but prohibit selling the software or distributing any modified version of it. If someone wants to distribute the original source and a diff file I have no problem, as long as the next user gets the unmodified source and knows that changes have been made. I don't claim that I own software which has been distributed using my version of shar, nor backed up using my backup programs. I don't care if you charge people to play my games, as long as the games are sold. If someone uses my enhanced version of getopt I am delighted to have been useful. If the user's guide I wrote for zoo saves someone some time, hurrah! That's my view on the world, you're free to use it, just don't sell it or hack it up. FSF has done a lot of good and put an incredible amount of effort into releasing software. I disagree with their license, but it's their right to do what they want. I would not use any GNU tools to develop software for my company or which might be sold, because I don't want to risk loss of rights to my source code. I think that a lot of people who are most vocal on this are either (a) people who have never sold a piece of software, or (b) have never taken the time to properly give software away, with a man page, makefile, ifdefs for at least BSD and USG, etc. If you don't know how nice it is to get paid for software you don't see what there is to lose, and if you haven't contributed anything yourself you're just a greedy taker who wants even more for nothing. If this offends someone (I realize that it may) you might want to reply by mail. bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM) {uunet | philabs}!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me