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SubjectRe: Article: IBM wants to "clean up the license" of Linux
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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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