Mike McCarty wrote: > Andy Green wrote: > > [snip] > >> Identifying with RHAT and acknowledging the benefits we get from their >> work are Good Things, but there is nothing wrong with respins IMO, >> legally or morally, in fact its the whole idea. > > Actually, it's the only point of the GPL. > If someone offers me something without expectation of recompense, > and I take it without offering recompense, then what have I done > which is reprehensible. Well it is nice to agree about something. > BTW, the feelings that things are not quite "fair" being expressed > here are exactly the reason that the GPL and LGPL inhibit > all commercial development for Linux. There are some people who > think it isn't "fair". "inhibit all commercial development for Linux" does not seem to be quite called for, since we discuss this on a Redhat ML, which after all is a relatively Large American Corporation with plenty of money commercially developing Linux. My living at the moment is off the back of using Linux commercially. And, eg, Nokia 770. However I actually agree with your larger point: there are cultural issues. In the news now copying music around is wrongly termed 'theft' by industry suits in the same way MSFT used to use the word 'innovation' at every opportunity. In education and publishing copying content around is 'plagiarism'. Downloading has the concept of 'leeching' from ancient times. Most cultures have a concept of gift exchange, where you get something for free but you are obligated to return the favour or you are a 'freeloader'. People don't want to see themselves in terms of those negative words, that IMO is where the leeriness is coming from. People are generally a bit unsure of what the deal is with this liberally licensed stuff on both sides -- I saw it before with a well-known website that publishes articles under Creative Commons but which (unsuccessfully) tried to stop someone taking them at their word and mirroring their content, as allowed by their license choice. But... the confusion is part of the times, not a GPL problem IMO. People all over are chewing through trying to work out what is acceptable, like the Google judgement in the news today and opinions on other Google enterprises like the book scanning to come. IMO over time with, eg, great sites like http://jamendo.com REALLY walking the walk, the culture will gradually shift towards positive expectations about the rights from liberally licensed media and software. -Andy
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