Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 19 Dec 1998 23:24:24 +0000 ( ) | From | Aaron Lehmann <> | Subject | Article: IBM wants to "clean up the license" of Linux |
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From http://www.zdnet.com/sr/stories/news/0,4538,2177559,00.html:
"With a general public license, there are some exposures with liability and how open are the patents if you modify the code. The best way to solve this is by cleaning up the license."
**shudder**
It is unclear to me whether they are suggesting that GNU change the GPL in their favor, or want Linux to swich to another license. I hope they understand that GPL'd code cannot be switched to a different license.
I am afraid that large, proprietary companies with intrest in the Linux market will lead to the death of GNU/Linux. I already see here about companies criticizing the GPL. Another example would be WordPerfect. Thursday when a new version came out for $0 cost I decided to sin and try it. It sucked. It was totally proprietary and used proprietary libraries. The source code was not even available so there was no way I could compile it on my architecture of choice (PowerPC), and binaries were only available for i386. Corel released a small press release saying how "We have proven that the Linux community wants access to commercial, mainstream applications. . . and we intend to deliver them." Well, not everyone does want proprietary applications! I'm sticking with emacs until AbiWord is ready for prime time. I am not looking forward to the day when I will be forced to switch to another operating system such as GNU/HURD becuase it becomes nearrly impossible to run a clean GNU/Linux system becuase GNU/Linux has gotten too popular for it to be free.
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