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  From: Mark Newton <newton@atdot.dotat.org>
  To  : Michael Davies <michael@msdavies.net>
  Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 12:23:32 +0930

Re: Re: bsd- easier than you think

On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 11:11:39AM +0900, Michael Davies wrote:

 > lol.
 > GPL source code is a philanthropic gift to be enjoyed in the future. 

Sorry, no -- A park or a hospital is a philanthropic gift to be 
enjoyed for the future.  

You can hardly call it philanthorpy when you're saying, "Sure, use
this, but if you carry out certain behaviours you'll be obligated
to give some of your stuff back to me."

I've never heard of anyone in a park funded by a philanthropist 
being required to share their picnic with the millionaire;  Have
you?

This is part of the intellectual dishonesty I'm talking about:  GPL
proponents claim to be so high-and-mighty about their free gift,
but it isn't free and it isn't a gift.  It comes loaded with conditions.
I wouldn't bother having this conversation if they'd simply admit
that they're on the same moral plane as commercial software developers.

 > It's guarranteed "free-speech" permanently, even for derived works,

The "even for derived works" bit is what grates.  A developer needs to
make a choice between "compelled-speech" (which isn't free!) or no speech
at all.

Bit of a faustian bargain, eh?

 > Sure, ok.  What about ArgoUML and Poseidon for UML.  ArgoUML is a BSD
 > developed UML design tool written in Java.  It doesn't seem to have
 > moved along very much (last release Oct 7, 2002).  It's nice - but it
 > suffers from "write once crawl everywhere".  Poseidon seems to have
 > taken over from ArgoUML - releases occuring this year, and playing with
 > it, it's a much nicer product.  Will ArgoUML continue to be developed? 
 > Time will tell, but that's the first example of thought of.

So ArgoUML is in the same state Ingres was in during the early 90's.
Hardly a compelling counter-example.

 > Can you name even *one* example, real or hypothetical, of a non-
 > infrastructure piece of software developed under a BSD licence that
 > is a killer-application? Something Aunt-Nelly would use? [1]

I'm having trouble coming up with any open source software at all that
Aunt Nelly would use. :-)

The closest I can come up with is Mozilla:  It's not strict BSD, but 
it's a license which permits incorporation of Mozilla code into closed
source commercial software.

Good enough?

  - mark

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I tried an internal modem,                    newton@atdot.dotat.org
     but it hurt when I walked.                          Mark Newton
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