Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Jay Maynard <jmaynard@××××××××.cx>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] No XFree86 w/ new license
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 20:21:07
Message-Id: 20040227202146.GA17145@thebrain.conmicro.cx
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] No XFree86 w/ new license by Paul de Vrieze
1 On Fri, Feb 27, 2004 at 08:22:19PM +0100, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
2 > On Friday 27 February 2004 19:33, Jay Maynard wrote:
3 > > I'm not trolling. These are my honest beliefs, honestly arrived at, and
4 > > I believe that Stallmanite misstatements of fact should not be allowed
5 > > to go unchallenged.
6 > You are pursuing a pointless discussion, to me that is trolling. If you
7 > happen to disagree, so be it, but the discussion is pointless anyway.
8
9 Fine. Does that go for both sides, then? Can I call others on it if they
10 reopen the discussion, or take the Stallmanite line? Further, how do I
11 counteract the usual assumption that silence implies agreement?
12
13 > > ..or is the Gentoo project another bastion of Stallmanism, like the Debian
14 > > Project?
15 > Some while ago (maybe more than a year), RMS tried to persuade us to call
16 > the distribution gentoo gnu/linux. As you may know that never happened, so
17 > I find the suggestion that Gentoo would be a bastion of Stallmanism
18 > strange.
19
20 No, I didn't, and I'm happy to hear it. I've seen refernces to Gentoo
21 GNU/Linux a few times, and wasn't sure what the official position was.
22
23 All I ask is that folks recognize that Stallman's religion is not
24 universally adhered to among those with an interest in Linux, and not state
25 his political ideas as fact...which is what I have been called for doing.
26 The GPL is not the be-all and end-all of licenses, and is not the only
27 license capable of guaranteeing that one's code will always and forever
28 remain freely available. (Yes, I'm well aware of the operation of copyright
29 law. I'm also aware of the distinction between copyright law and licensing.)
30 Any Open Source Definition-compliant license will have that effect. The GPL
31 is merely the best known of those licenses, but there are folks who write
32 GPLed code not of their own choice, and it is wrong to assume that everyone
33 who releases a piece of code under the GPL does so because they fully and
34 completely agree with every last point of Stallmanite dogma. (Case in point:
35 I personally know of one suite of drivers that was released as GPL despite
36 the author's desire to release it as BSD, because corporate management
37 decreed that it would be GPLed in a mistaken belief that that would be
38 required for it to be included in the kernel.) Further, while there are
39 components of the GNU system in every Linux distribution I'm aware of, that
40 does not give Stallman the right to hijack the name, and his attempts to do
41 so amount to whining that he's not getting credit for his efforts - despite
42 the fact that lots and lots and lots of other folks who have contributed
43 similar effort aren't getting credit in the name of the system either.
44 (Indeed, not even the change to the XFree86 license can be viewed as an
45 attempt to claim such credit: they're not changing the name, just asking for
46 recognition in places that other folks get recognized.)
47
48 One doesn't have to agree with Stallman's utopia, or wish to be a part of
49 it, in order to wish to see Linux succeed in the marketplace or help make it
50 so. What really set me off was the assumption, in the first message I
51 replied to, that such agreement was necessary and could be assumed without
52 further thought or discussion.
53
54 The best way to avoid having what you see as "pointless discussion" on the
55 list is not to start it. I won't if others won't, but I see little wrong
56 with replying whenever my - or anyone else's - agreement with Stallmanite
57 dogma is assumed simply because of my interest in the subject or (potential)
58 membership in the community.
59
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