# Re: forwarded message from Richard Stallman

David Mosberger-Tang (David.Mosberger@acm.org)
Sun, 22 Nov 1998 09:52:59 -0800

- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
- Next message: David Mosberger-Tang: "Re: Problems compiling sane-1.00"
- Previous message: David Mosberger-Tang: "Re: compiling problem with egcs-1.03a"
- In reply to: becka@rz.uni-duesseldorf.de: "Re: forwarded message from Richard Stallman"
- Next in thread: David Mosberger-Tang: "Re: forwarded message from Richard Stallman"

>>>>> On Sun, 22 Nov 1998 14:32:45 +0100 (MET), becka@rz.uni-duesseldorf.de said:

Andy> In another project (guess which), we got so tired of all that
Andy> strange restrictions (L)GPL imposed and the reservations some
Andy> groups (BSD people especially) had against it, that we
Andy> entierely switched to MIT style, with the explicit comment,
Andy> that you may relicense it to (L)GPL as you like.

With all the problems GPL may have, resorting to a license as weak as
MIT or BSD is a very bad idea, IMHO. The BSD-style licenses have
amply proven that you _have_ to put in a requirement that
modifications to sources remain open. Otherwise companies will start
to siphon off the software, make proprietary "enhancements" to it, and
you'll get a fracturing of the market like we have it with proprietary
UNIXes these days. In the end, it's so fractured and incompatible
that nobody cares for it anymore.

--david

    --
    Source code, list archive, and docs: http://www.mostang.com/sane/
    To unsubscribe: echo unsubscribe sane-devel | mail majordomo@mostang.com

- Next message: David Mosberger-Tang: "Re: Problems compiling sane-1.00"
- Previous message: David Mosberger-Tang: "Re: compiling problem with egcs-1.03a"
- In reply to: becka@rz.uni-duesseldorf.de: "Re: forwarded message from Richard Stallman"
- Next in thread: David Mosberger-Tang: "Re: forwarded message from Richard Stallman"