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On Fri, Feb 27, 2004 at 08:22:19PM +0100, Paul de Vrieze wrote: |
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> On Friday 27 February 2004 19:33, Jay Maynard wrote: |
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> > I'm not trolling. These are my honest beliefs, honestly arrived at, and |
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> > I believe that Stallmanite misstatements of fact should not be allowed |
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> > to go unchallenged. |
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> You are pursuing a pointless discussion, to me that is trolling. If you |
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> happen to disagree, so be it, but the discussion is pointless anyway. |
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Fine. Does that go for both sides, then? Can I call others on it if they |
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reopen the discussion, or take the Stallmanite line? Further, how do I |
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counteract the usual assumption that silence implies agreement? |
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|
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> > ..or is the Gentoo project another bastion of Stallmanism, like the Debian |
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> > Project? |
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> Some while ago (maybe more than a year), RMS tried to persuade us to call |
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> the distribution gentoo gnu/linux. As you may know that never happened, so |
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> I find the suggestion that Gentoo would be a bastion of Stallmanism |
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> strange. |
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|
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No, I didn't, and I'm happy to hear it. I've seen refernces to Gentoo |
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GNU/Linux a few times, and wasn't sure what the official position was. |
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|
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All I ask is that folks recognize that Stallman's religion is not |
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universally adhered to among those with an interest in Linux, and not state |
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his political ideas as fact...which is what I have been called for doing. |
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The GPL is not the be-all and end-all of licenses, and is not the only |
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license capable of guaranteeing that one's code will always and forever |
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remain freely available. (Yes, I'm well aware of the operation of copyright |
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law. I'm also aware of the distinction between copyright law and licensing.) |
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Any Open Source Definition-compliant license will have that effect. The GPL |
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is merely the best known of those licenses, but there are folks who write |
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GPLed code not of their own choice, and it is wrong to assume that everyone |
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who releases a piece of code under the GPL does so because they fully and |
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completely agree with every last point of Stallmanite dogma. (Case in point: |
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I personally know of one suite of drivers that was released as GPL despite |
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the author's desire to release it as BSD, because corporate management |
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decreed that it would be GPLed in a mistaken belief that that would be |
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required for it to be included in the kernel.) Further, while there are |
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components of the GNU system in every Linux distribution I'm aware of, that |
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does not give Stallman the right to hijack the name, and his attempts to do |
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so amount to whining that he's not getting credit for his efforts - despite |
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the fact that lots and lots and lots of other folks who have contributed |
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similar effort aren't getting credit in the name of the system either. |
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(Indeed, not even the change to the XFree86 license can be viewed as an |
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attempt to claim such credit: they're not changing the name, just asking for |
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recognition in places that other folks get recognized.) |
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One doesn't have to agree with Stallman's utopia, or wish to be a part of |
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it, in order to wish to see Linux succeed in the marketplace or help make it |
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so. What really set me off was the assumption, in the first message I |
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replied to, that such agreement was necessary and could be assumed without |
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further thought or discussion. |
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|
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The best way to avoid having what you see as "pointless discussion" on the |
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list is not to start it. I won't if others won't, but I see little wrong |
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with replying whenever my - or anyone else's - agreement with Stallmanite |
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dogma is assumed simply because of my interest in the subject or (potential) |
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membership in the community. |
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-- |
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