Two GPL Questions

[Matthew C. Weigel]

On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:

> BSD allows other to fork your code, extend and embrace it and never ever
> compensate you for anything (see the case of microsoft's ftp client, for
> instance) if they so wish.

You say that as if it's a bad thing.  Put another way, the BSD license
allows another to use your code for whatever they wish; it gives the
user near-total freedom.

> So yes, it is about control, more specifically, of battling control.

Yes.  It keeps anyone else from having control, thus leaving the author
as the de facto person in control.  That is, the copyright holder(s)
can relicense the code, but no one else can.

The BSDL relies upon social force to keep modifications free, while the
GPL relies upon legal force.  The former is friendlier but accepts a
less-than-100% success rate, the latter shoots for 100% success but at
the cost of keeping the code from being used in some circumstances.

Both are free software, and that's good enough for me (and this list).
-- 
 Matthew Weigel
 Research Systems Programmer
 mcweigel at cs.cmu.edu ne weigel at pitt.edu

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