Free software survives the original copyright holder

Free software survives the original copyright holder

Posted Sep 2, 2004 16:11 UTC (Thu) by AJWM (subscriber, #15888)
In reply to: Free software survives the original copyright holder by gdt
Parent article: Pointless ideology?

And what of the moral aspects of ignoring the author's explicit wish?

Just which of the author's explicit wishes are you referring to? This latest one, or the wish the author expressed -- repeatedly -- when he first released (part of) the driver code, and subsequent modifications, under the GPL?

To me the most disappointing aspect has been the shoddy treatment of the author.

To me the most disappointing aspect has been the author's shoddy treatment of the community. From the second sentence of the preamble to the GPL: "the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software" [emphasis added]. What kind of a guarantee is it if we let the guarantor say "sorry, I've changed my mind, you can't share this any more"?

If he no longer wants his name associated with it, that's certainly his perogative (especially if he no longer wants to be annoyed by support requests or bug reports). But not saying, in effect, "I'm taking my ball and going home, you're all big meanies and I don't want to play anymore".

I think we ought to abide by the wish the author expressed when he licensed the code under the GPL in the first place.

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