lesser GPL restrictions

Rui Miguel Seabra rms at greymalkin.yi.org
Tue Nov 6 22:49:20 UTC 2001


On Tue, Nov 06, 2001 at 02:42:24PM -0800, email at greglondon.com wrote:
> On Tue, 06 November 2001, Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:
> >    someone can link with your code and make a proprietary program, 
> > you gain very little, the community looses in general for another 
> > proprietary piece of software was born.
> how can open source lose anything from a new proprietary program???

open source'rers are not _the_ community, they are part of the community.
the principles of open source carry the need for share of knowledge, which is something that is lost if your code is "taken" away.

> as long as the license prevents a proprietary fork, 
> who cares if its linked with a proprietary program?!?!

Because it promotes the usage of proprietary software, which is not good.

> The measure of open-source success is
> based solely on the number of people using
> open source code.

No. The measure of open source success is not only that, but also the amount of software thus released.
Please, do not reduce such success to mere usage of software.

> The existence of proprietary code is neither a 
> gain nor loss to open-source code.

Of course not. But promoting the usage of proprietary software is a loss to open source, and not to it alone.

> Proprietary code is not a hindrance to 
> open-source. And if proprietary code uses
> some open-source code, that adds to the total
> number of poeple using the open-soruce code.

Too true, however, it is not shared back, the work based on what I shared with.
That is unfair.

> the more people that use open-soruce, the better.
> where do you measure this as a "loss"???

Do not distort what I said. I said that promoting proprietary is a loss. Never will someone hear me say that <<the more people that use open-soruce>> the more shall we loose.

> the more I listen, the more I hear subjective opinions
> being passed off as objective, concrete truths.

Is there a methodology on this list about flame throwing?
Personally, I'll do my best to avoid it, but I do not much enjoy this kind of heat.

Hugs, rms
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