Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!adm!lhc!mimsy!mojo!mojo!djm From: djm@eng.umd.edu (David J. MacKenzie) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: The GNU Public Virus strikes again! Message-ID: Date: 14 Sep 90 16:31:09 GMT References: <25630@shamash.cdc.com> <12347@hoptoad.uucp> <8YW.FW.@splut.conmicro.com> Sender: news@eng.umd.edu (The News System) Organization: University of Maryland, College Park Lines: 44 In-Reply-To: jay@splut.conmicro.com's message of 14 Sep 90 02:09:55 GMT In article <8YW.FW.@splut.conmicro.com> jay@splut.conmicro.com (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes: Here's one case where the GPV has acted in direct contradiction to its stated goals: it has decreased sharing of code, instead of increasing it. In the long run, the GPL penalizes people who (unsociably) don't share their code. FSUUCP is *not* free software, and it is *not* being shared, despite the term "shareware". It's long past time for the soi-disant FSF to quit trying to coerce others to give away their source code. It's not coersion. FSF can put whatever terms of use they want on the code that they distribute, and no one who doesn't use FSF code is affected. Don't misrepresent the GPL, please. If you use my code, you implicitly agree to abide by my terms. FSF's (the GPL) are designed to improve the state of software and society; yes, those who buck against them make extra work for themselves, but they bring that upon themselves. Why doesn't FSF pick on someone their own size? The Clarkson packet drivers are distributed under the GPV (which is why I gave up on modifying their SLIP driver for my DG-1 laptop), yet (according to postings on comp.protocols.tcp.ibm-pc) Xircom, the company who makes the Ethernet adapter that plugs in to a PC parallel port, distributes a driver built on the Clarkson skeleton, and prohibits anyone from redistributing the source to it. This is a clear violation of the terms of the GPV. Why isn't the FSF howling at their door? Maybe it's because they're afraid that it will be unenforceable, and they'd rather use the specter of litigation to scare individual software developers into releasing their code? You're confusing copyright ownership with licensing terms. FSF only worries about *GNU* code distributed under the GPL; it's Clarkson's problem if people are violating the license for code that *they* (not FSF) are the copyright holder for. Not all code placed under the GPL is copyrighted by FSF, silly! And only the copyright holder can sue. FSF *has* had to work with larger companies to get them to comply with the GPL for GNU code. NeXT has released the Objective-C front end for GCC under the terms of the GPL; it will be part of gcc version 2 (still under development). -- David J. MacKenzie