Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Article: IBM wants to "clean up the license" of Linux | Date | Sun, 27 Dec 1998 11:57:39 -0500 | From | "Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH" <> |
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In message <Pine.LNX.3.96.981227110552.241B-100000@leocadia>, Zack Brown writes : +----- | If Richard Stallman gets mad at the linux community for not using the term | gnu/linux and decides to release a new version of the GPL that undoes its | current meaning (and e.g. allows proprietary forking etc), thus affecting | all programs currently licenced under the GPL, what could anyone do about | that? And please don't say, "oh, he would *never* do something like that." +--->8
Then he would prove himself to be a hypocrite *and* destroy everything the Free Software Foundation putatively stands for. (And would probably get to hear mocking laughter from James Gosling, if only in his imagination.) It could conceivably happen, but I wouldn't worry too much about it; it'd cost him more than it would us. Linus can re-release the kernel under a different license, and I doubt there'd be much argument from the various contributors, were the GPL so subverted.
And no, I don't believe RMS would do so over a name. I don't doubt that *something* could lead to it, if only because everyone has a breaking point, but I don't think this is his breaking point.
Not to mention --- consider a slight modification of the above:
"If Richard Stallman gets mad at the linux community for not using the Hurd...."
The GPL does not confer the right to be a despot on its author.
(BTW, the implied insult to RMS is not called for.)
-- brandon s. allbery [os/2][linux][solaris][japh] allbery@kf8nh.apk.net system administrator [WAY too many hats] allbery@ece.cmu.edu carnegie mellon / electrical and computer engineering KF8NH We are Linux. Resistance is an indication that you missed the point.
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