The Industry choice

[Stefan Axelsson]

Bulba! wrote:

> I've read Novell license of internal development tools it provides
> (which I reviewed for some purpose). This is I think relevant 
> part:

> I'm not saying licenses like you claim don't exist. Sure,
> they may exist and they suck. 
> 
> The point is, they have _limited impact_ and by 
> the very fact of their "exclusion" nature, this
> aspect tends to repel users than attract them to 
> use this thing.

Well, as I didn't catch that we were discussing development tools but 
even so, I thought the license you quoted rather strengthened my point 
in the section on 'reverse engineering?. (Then again I've seen other's 
where that was not the case, was it MS (?) quite a few years back that 
didn't allow you to develop an OS using their tool chain? And that was a 
binary license.) If you look at actual end user program licenses (such 
as Solaris/wxWorks etc) the picture is much clearer.

In any case, it's somewhat beside the point as even the license you 
chose to quote took away precisely all those rights that the GPL grants 
you. You weren't allowed to (in any way shape or form) to communicate 
anything you knew about that source to anyone else.

And I don't buy into your argument that a use of some source code would 
go against the 'intended' use by making it GPL. How the hell am I 
supposed to know what the author 'intends' if he doesn't tell me? 
Especially if, of all the available licenses, choses one that explicitly 
permits the sort of use that I envision? I mean, it's not as if many BSD 
fans complain that MS took much TCP/IP related code and put it in 
Windows (ftp etc). Without sharing anything back with the community. If 
that's OK, how am I supposed to know that my use isn't?

It's just the same situation as when I lock my house. That's intended as 
a means of communication with the rest of society. It communicates my 
intent that I'm not home (or don't want to be disturbed) and that I 
don't want them in the house, and it does so more strongly than mere 
social convention does. There are after all several members of community 
that needs this reminder; notably children. It's emphatically not to 
keep thieves out (much) as they won't be much hampered by the ordinary lock.

If you don't want me to use your code in the way I envision then tell 
me. The license is the *perfect* place to do so.

Stefan,
-- 
Stefan Axelsson  (email at http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~sax)