Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!shelby!csli!carl
From: carl@csli.Stanford.EDU (Carl Schaefer)
Newsgroups: gnu.gcc
Subject: Re: Some people won't use GCC
Message-ID: <9287@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 5 Jun 89 20:16:11 GMT
References: <8906022109.AA00195@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu> <8906022354.AA28510@uther.cs.purdue.edu> <16505@paris.ics.uci.edu> <4818@uoregon.uoregon.edu>
Sender: carl@csli.Stanford.EDU (Carl Schaefer)
Reply-To: carl@csli.stanford.edu (Carl Schaefer)
Distribution: gnu
Organization: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford U.
Lines: 58

In article <4818@uoregon.uoregon.edu> markv@tillamook.UUCP (Mark VandeWettering) writes:
>	The Free Software Foundation was founded to make software
>	available to people everywhere, to create software that everyone
>	could use.  Unfortunately, the FSF has decided to copyright its
>	works under a very RESTRICTIVE license.

Hardly.  There are some conditions on the redistribution of GNU and
GNU-derived software; relative to software licenses from your vanilla
major vendor (IBM, DEC, etc.), are you sure you can call the copyleft
"very RESTRICTIVE"?

>	All the people who are part of the Free Software Foundation will
>	disagree, claiming that this license is what guarantees that the
>	software will remain free.   But you don't need a license to do
>	that.  It's called PUBLIC DOMAIN.

See <8906022131.AA00215@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu> for a clear
explanation of why Richard Stallman calls GNU software "free".  The
key point is that he is using a definition of "free" that, while
somewhat different from yours, is equally valid.

>	But, you claim, then people could snarf it up, make proprietary
>	changes, sell it, restrict access to binaries.
>
>	Yes.  But you would always be able to compete with that because
>	your intent was to make it freely available.

What if some vendor modifies a GNU product but doesn't distribute
source to their changes?  How does the GNU project compete with this?
(see the above cited article again, re: X)  The copyleft is designed to
insure that all forms of GNU software remain available to all users,
whether obtained directly from the Free Software Foundation or via any
number of third parties.

>	I admire the Free Software Foundation.  Their nearly endless
>	energy and talent has produced some very fine software, and I
>	probably will continue to use their products.  However, I have
>	begun to view the "copyleft" under which gnu products are
>	released as being too restrictive.

Who owns your kernel?  (assuming you're running Unix)  Do you really
have more freedom to use/modify/distribute whatever OS you run than
the various GNU tools you have available to you?

>	It sure would be nice to replace those copyleft notices which
>	add a good 8K to every file in GNU software with something like
>
>	"Use this code.  Improve this code.  Tell me about it."

This is precisely the point.  The copyleft allows the first of these,
encourages the second, but requires the third.

>Mark VandeWettering	

Carl
-- 
Carl Schaefer
carl@csli.stanford.edu