On Jul 21, 2008, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Alexandre Oliva wrote: >> >>> Alexandre Oliva wrote: >>>> This is fundamentally contradictory. If you have to choose between >>>> these two, you're choosing between promoting either FS or OSS. >>> It is a problem the GPL creates. >> That's a red herring. The GPL has *zero* to do with it. > the GPL is the well-known instance. The GPL meets both the FS and the OSS definition. Again, bringing it into this argument would be a red herring even if you refrained from your proven-wrong and now proven-to-confuse-yourself misunderstanding that the GPL imposes restrictions. >> How about you step back and analyze what you mean by "promoting FOSS", >> like I have? > For me it means using/reusing/improving freely-available, well-tested > code in all possible situations. And where did you get this idea that this is what Free (and|or) Open Source Software are about? >>> I believe they are misguided in applying restrictions that make it >>> impossible to use GPL code in many situations. >> Red herring and false premise. > Sorry, but I happen to believe my opinion is as valid as yours. You can believe it is valid, it just so happens to be irrelevant to this debate about the differences between the FS and the OSS movements, because GPL is accepted and promoted by both. > Present some evidence that not permitting code > reuse/redistribution/improvement has ever helped anyone if you want to > get anywhere with that argument. Not permitting this would be contradictory to both the Free Software definition and the Open Source definition. This is getting silly. Permitting them under certain conditions and requirements is what all the tens (hundreds?) of licenses that meet definitions is all about. The conditions and requirements of some of these licenses at times may feel too cumbersome to those who don't share the same values and goals. That's fine, and by design. They have caused more software to be brought into the corpus of software available as Free Software and as Open-Source Software that otherwise might have been made harmful proprietary software, and in other cases they have prevented or significantly delayed the release of harmful proprietary software. > It is only difficult to escape when equal/better choices don't > exist. 'fraid you've never tried to move to a superior Free Software platform, away from an application that uses a proprietary format, that nobody else supports and yet you've stored years of data in it, >> You're evaluating the scenario under your own system of value and >> prejudices, not under the two very different systems of values of the >> two movements I have described. > Yes, of course I use my own values. If you're incapable of or unwilling to put yourself in a position of understanding other values, as necessary to answer a question such as "do you notice the difference between these two movements?", there's no point in my wasting time with that. >> IOW, it's circular logic, and the >> conclusions are unrelated with the question or the premises. > There's plenty of evidence for the choices that a non-restrictive code > base like the original TCP/IP implementation can produce, but no > equivalent for GPL restrictions. IOW, while pretending to answer one point, you're not even making an effort to understand that point, but rather trying to go back to an apparent fixation on an unrelated point. Sorry, I don't want to go back there, we're through with that one. Please enjoy the debate. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
