les... i'm mildy amused by your postings.. but your comment... -->>If you had read any of the postings, you should know that my complaint is that the GPL has done more than anything else to keep Microsoft in business and a monopoly.<<---- is outright ludacris!!!! msoft has been impacted by the GPL.. and more specifically Open Source, but given that some of the larger projects are GPl, the two are more or less intertwined... without the GPL/Open Source, Linux/Apache would have simply been competitive offerings to MSoft apps.. and one can actually argue that the apps wouldn't have been made at all.. and without linux/apache, would you really have the explosive growth of internet companies... so please, rework your logic... peace.. -----Original Message----- From: fedora-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:fedora-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Les Mikesell Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 9:02 AM To: For users of Fedora Core releases Subject: Re: FC4 or FC5 On Sat, 2006-06-17 at 00:17, Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu wrote: > I don't understand why it's so popular in recent times to immediately > single out and call someone a communist or terrorist when he or she > stands up for his or her beliefs. The communist label comes from the idea of forcing people to share things they otherwise wouldn't. RMS may have set out to eliminate proprietary licenses but he hasn't accomplished that and there's no reason to think he will succeed. And in fact the GPL only adds restrictions so rather than forcing people to share it prevents it it many cases. > If it hasn't occurred to you already, > I'm talking about beliefs that don't harm other human beings. And, no, > the GPL doesn't harm human beings. It does, however, harm the > traditional software company. Well, no... It only harms small potential competitors to large software companies. Large companies don't need to use any GPL'd components since they can afford to do everything from scratch and they can make arrangements to add any additional proprietary components that they can license. Small companies that would like to leverage free software to build better competing programs are prevented by the GPL from making those same arrangements for components under a different license. > They are pissed. They're REALLY, REALLY, pissed. Ummm, yeah... Microsoft is pissed all the way to the bank. RMS's work helped make one person the richest man in the world. > I can appreciate what you and others like you are trying to do, though. > Since the F/OSS world is a community, what better way is there to > mortally wound, or even destroy it, than by getting its members to turn > in on themselves? There was a free software community before the GPL, and there still is. Don't pretend that everyone has ever agreed that the GPL restrictions are a good idea - or that they ever will. > Everything would just implode. Constant bickering, > fighting, projects falling away because everyone involved is bitter, > angry, resentful, and tired. No, just separate projects like the *bsd's which continue with their purpose that predates Linux, and projects like perl with licenses that no one can fault. > jdow is confounding. But, Les really has me going for a loop. The guy > uses GPL software left, right, and centre, but is constantly crying > about the GPL license. If you had read any of the postings, you should know that my complaint is that the GPL has done more than anything else to keep Microsoft in business and a monopoly. > I can think of but only one reason why he and > others like him are so upset: all this glorious, brilliant code > meandering its way through cyberspace, curing problems just about > everywhere it goes, can't be incorporated into their closed source > products. I want to be able to buy such products, not sell them. > The travesty! The horror! Money and power oh so close, but > for that damned GPL, may as well be light years away. Yes, and that means I have to keep buying from Microsoft. > A bit dramatic, but accurate, in my opinion. It's not over the top. > > These guys are pissed. They are REALLY, REALLY pissed. No, they just don't exist. Microsoft is perfectly happy about that. I'd rather see the bar lowered for their competition. > I run into this all the time. For example, I know for a FACT that sales > guys at every proprietary telecom company is running to all potential > customers with the words "Asterisk is free, it can't be good, don't use > it." These guys are pissed. They are REALLY, REALLY pissed. > > What's worse is they're also very scared. Scared people do evil things. There is nothing evil about having choices among many proprietary offerings as well as whatever people have chosen to make freely available. Consumers are perfectly capable of making their own choices. The problem is when there is only one choice, and the restrictive GPL is a major factor in keeping it that way because it keeps the well tested code from being combined with components under different licenses to make new competitive products. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
