[ILUG] RMS: KDE in violation of GPL

[kevin lyda]

*shudder* licensing discussion...

On Wed, Sep 06, 2000 at 09:59:22AM +0100, Phil Trickett wrote:
> It made for a very thought provoking discussion though, as to why should
> people be forced to do things with their code, which seemed very sensible

forcing?

> when compared with free speech, as alot of people are keen on pointing out
> at the moment.

i've had friends who had various levels of security clearance in u.s.
defense labs.  almost all of them have written code or papers that they
could be charge with a crime for reading now.  either their clearance
was lowered or the clearance required to read the paper was raised.

now for folks in intelligence circles that's fine.  they think that's
quite normal.

and it goes further.  i could write a paper on using neural nets to select
intersting messages in chinese.  some person with higher classification
could add further comments about using perl 6's new unicode support
to reduce the work required by the more time consuming ai method.
perhaps i'm on the perl porter's list and know of some bugs that would
cause that method to fail - i can't read the paper so i can't warn them.

and while they find that an acceptable risk, i don't.  i think it leads
to things like the chinese embassy bombing in kosovo.

"er, kevin, licensing?"

well, while it's less serious, i see the same scenario between bsd and the
gpl.  with a bsd license someone can take my code and make it so i can't
read it.  i still get credit, but i can't see it.  with the gpl people
can *choose* to take my code but they can't hide it.

different people have different values.  heck, i even love watching
james bond flicks.  but i'm not going to join...  er...  the secret
shamrocks?  ie5?  o'cia?  well, i won't be getting a security clearance
(particularly if They see this message) and i won't release any serious
code under the bsd license.  gpl: the license preferred by code flashers.

kevin

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