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On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 12:24:15 +0000 "Richard Brown" <rich@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi Neil > > On 29/01/07, Neil Williams <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > That's why I will continue to correct misunderstandings around > > copyright law - it isn't pedantry, it matters because those who > > seek to destroy free software do so by exploiting misunderstandings > > and deliberate FUD around copyright and licences. > > > > To defend free software, we must understand the law as is, the > > mechanism of the threats and the purpose of what we try to defend. > > > I am glad that you continue to do this. I know I would love to see Mac > OS X released under GPL. The fact that they use a BSD licence is > probably the reason they 'lifted' I think it was freebsd rather than > Linux. Linux is just the kernel - a lot of the GNU operating system is released under BSD style licences and this is often common to fooBSD and GNU/Linux, with Apple's modifications towhich we have no access. > Now of course the bsd community is annoyed about it. But they > made there bed they may as well lie in it. Quite. They don't really have any right to be annoyed - the licence is very explicit that Apple are perfectly within the licence to take the code and approriate it into a proprietary package. I think the BSD licence is too optimistic - it hopes that people will respect the spirit in which the licence is written, not the language of the licence itself. Apple, Microsoft, SCO, anyone is free to take BSD code and base an entire proprietary OS upon it without ever contributing to the BSD community - it encourages parasitic behaviour and commercial interests need very little encouragement to take something for nothing and give nothing in return. It's deemed good business, if one sided. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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