[NTLUG:Discuss] RMS's Speach

[Steve Baker]

kbrannen at gte.net wrote:

> > That contrast seems crucial to me; RMS is very clearly an academic
> > scientist, and gets quite enraged when people break the rules of
> > academic credit.  Academic credit isn't so important to you and I who
> > don't live in worlds where academic credit is the main currency we
> > carry around.
> 
> I can agree with him though on copyright (left, middle, whatever. :-)  In
> today's world where infomation should generally be freely available,
> copyright's major purpose is to authenticate ownership, at least IMHO.
> However, as I understand copyleft, it has requirements in it that I don't
> agree with, but with the above insight, it is easier to understand why they
> are there.

Well, somewhat.  His 'academic' obsession with attribution and authorship
is undoubtedly as described...but I'm not sure the other requirements of
the GPL come from that.

I think RMS's aims with the GNU license were less to do with his academic
heritage than a reasoned argument to ensure that the following scenario
cannot happen:

Hypothetically:

  You write a kickass chunk of software (suppose it's a new communications
  protocol or something).  You release it as free source code.  Microsoft
  pick it up - realise it's *GREAT* - change the protocol by altering the
  order of the fields in the packet header or something equally trivial -
  then release it as a part of Windoze 2001 - WITHOUT RELEASING THE CHANGES
  TO YOUR ORIGINAL CODE BACK INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN - they don't even
  document what they changed in an Open document.

Now, your protocol becomes wildly popular - with 100,000,000 computers
around the world running it - and with your name credited in the 'About'
box (so academic attribution is maintained).

HOWEVER, you don't have the source anymore - Microsoft locked it away.
Your version of the code is now useless - both to you and to everyone
else in the world because 99% of computers use the M$ varient of your
protocol.

What was previously OpenSourced code - is now locked up commercial code.

Can't happen?  Ask the Kerberos guys about that!
(For the full story - do a Google search for "Kerberos Microsoft")

The seemingly onerous conditions applied under GPL are really designed
to prevent that from happening - either directly or by devious backdoor
means.

This is a very real situation.  Look at the various embedded devices
now running versions of the Linux Kernel - it would be VERY tempting
to the manufacturers of those devices to lock up the sources to their
heavily hacked kernels - but they can't.  That's "A Good Thing" IMHO.

I'm concerned that the Xfree license (which doesn't have those same
conditions) will result in Xfree clones appearing for which we don't
have sources. There are early signs of where that might be a problem
in (for example) the Indrema Linux-based games console in this respect.

-- 
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