[Mailman-Users] Mailman Problems under OSX Lion

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Brad Knowles writes:

 > > Doesn't their failure to do so violate the GPL?
 > 
 > In this respect, I believe that they are probably in violation of
 > the spirit of the GPL, but perhaps not in the letter of the law.

RMS is adamantly opposed to that interpretation of the "spirit of the
GPL," and has said so on many occasions.  Usually in the context of
refusing to certify a license as a "free software license" because it
contains some kind of give-back clause.  Free software licenses are
allowed to contain only give-forward clauses.

 > Which is probably why they are so very violently opposed to having
 > any GPL-encumbered code anywhere in the company.

GCC?  gdb?  binutils?  Make?  CUPS?  Mailman?  And that's just the
applications I know of in the Mac OS X distribution itself; I'm sure
there are plenty of developers who use Emacs and other GNU tools in
preference to the Mac-supplied tools at Apple.

That said, yes, Apple clearly avoids the GPL.  I think it's at least
in part a reaction to the Objective-C fiasco, but mostly a pragmatic
balance between the cost and quality benefits of using a lot of open
source and Apple's general strategy of exploiting intellectual
property in creative ways to make profits.  Including other folks' IP
(iTunes, for example, would be a much smaller deal if Napster hadn't
been crushed).

Steve