[Ilugc] Is the proprietary camp winning ?
- From: ramanraj.k@xxxxxxxxx (Ramanraj K)
- Date: Thu Oct 12 17:54:24 2006
Mano wrote:
... I did not see
the connection between the 2 parts!
I am sure it is less difficult than finding the connection between logarithms,
compound interest, golden rectangle, google, knuth's metafont and all that has
with computers and free software !
Here is a snippet from an interview, and
the connection you would like to see:
<quote>
Jeremy Andrews: How important is the GPL
to you? Do you have any interest or
intention of working on a filesystem for
any of the BSD operating systems, or for
any closed source operating systems?
Hans Reiser: Doing GPL work is doing
charity work in our current legal and
economic framework. That should be and
could be changed, but for now it is so.
I have done my share of charity, and I
would not have a problem doing
proprietary work. I think people should
keep their lives in balance, and that
includes balancing charity work and
better paid work. That said, I have no
tempting offers at the moment, so I will
probably keep on doing GPL work for now.
It is not an easy life, I am $200k or
more in debt and drive a 1989 CRX Si. I
do want to finish my naming system project.
As for BSD licenses, I am not that
generous. If other people want to charge
for my code, they should give me some
too. I do offer licenses in addition to
the GPL for a fee.
</quote>
The request of Hans Reiser appears to
be a very reasonable one. The GPLv3 draft is being
discussed, and there is no harm in
inviting attention to this problem, so
that it is fixed and free software
developers can live a little more
comfortably and honourably.
Royalty - not license fees - could help to keep the software free, and at the
same time provide the much needed support for free software developers.
I have forwarded a copy of my previous post to a list that is read by RMS. I
do
hope the GPLv3 makes room for such a clause.
The problem is not one specific to just Reiser. This year might as well be the
year of wisdom for the free software community.
Recently:
- FreeBSD came up with a trademark policy. See
http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/documents/Guidelines.shtml
- GPLv3 draft had clauses allowing addition of terms and conditions based on
trademarks.
- For sometome now, Linus Torvalds has been making claims that "Linux" is a
trademark and demanding that people using "Linux" pay a license fee.
What appeared to be originally free is slowly and gradually turning non-free
and
could easily become just the usual dull and boring bait and switch variety of
the usual "free" products available in a market place. Rather than collecting
any license fees indirectly or imposing terms and conditions with trademarks as
an excuse, it would be more straight forward and much simpler to have
conditions
for payment of royalty to the authors.
- Ramanraj K
PS: Anyone who did not figure out what connects logarithms, compound interest,
golden rectangle, google, knuth's metafont, etc could visit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(mathematical_constant)
Have fun :)
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