Is this about free software?

Posted Dec 16, 2006 0:47 UTC (Sat) by krishna (guest, #24080)
In reply to: Is this about free software? by vblum
Parent article: "BadVista.org": FSF launches campaign against Microsoft Vista

Well, without the FSF's GPL, linux would be under a BSD-license. Isn't the existence of the GPL (a legal issue, not one of technical superiority) crucial to the adoption of free software? The campaign here is about freedoms being taken away, not that Vista is packed with eye candy or takes more memory to run.

I believe here that FSF is trying to preserve the freedoms that allow technical superiority/innovation to take place, and to say why they're important.

Is this about free software?

Posted Dec 16, 2006 1:09 UTC (Sat) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] (1 responses)

Infighting and constant fragmentation didn't help the BSD folk any in regards to "market share".

I understand and tend to agree with the arguments as to the GPL's superiority, but I don't think that explains the entire difference in adoption.

Is this about free software?

Posted Dec 16, 2006 11:20 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Actually it does. Not only BSD camp was hurt by fragmentation itself (a lot of code was in proprietary branches and is lost forever) but the fear of fragmentation was also a big problem.

Actually GPL is great because
1. Anyone have the right to fork the projects and
2. Anyone have the right to merge projects

Both are critical: 1 means that there are will be no lock-in and 2 means there are will be no useless duplicates thus no useless waste of resources.

Novell's agreement is direct attack on 2 - that's why community is so hostile...

Is this about free software?

Posted Dec 17, 2006 14:23 UTC (Sun) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link]

This is nonsense, the early versions of Linux weren't released under the BSD, nor GPL. The license resembled GPL more than BSD, as sharing changes and being free were the main points.